Head Over Feet
by signelchan
Summary: John has never really had a crush on anyone in his life, if one doesn't include actors and actresses, so when he sees a beautiful girl at the airport and feels something inside of him, he becomes a bit of a bumbling fool about it. To make matters even more interesting for him, the girl of his affections knows him - whether he knows her or not.
1. Don't Be Alarmed If I Fall

Of all the days in John's life that he would like to remember, his twenty-first birthday was definitely the top of the list. While he had no doubt about it being a great day, even if there were bad aspects to it that he had been told about time and time again, he would at least like to have some first-hand knowledge about what exactly made it so great. All he knew was that it was a day of many changes in his life, the least important being that he was finally able to drink outside of the comforts of his dad's house (although he never drank at the house to begin with). Then again, those other changes had started sprouting their roots for months before the day he turned the big 2-1 came around, and as long as he could wrap his head around those, not having memories of the day he celebrated becoming legal drinking age wasn't that much of a problem.

Everything found its beginnings when school had its holiday break the winter before. People who went away for college had come home for the season, and for a month, the sleepy little Washington suburb where John lived was going to be lively again with its college-age population back around. He knew he very well could have been one of those returners, but due to his lack of really knowing where he wanted to go in life anymore (things that had happened in high school made him question his career path), he had stayed around home and gone to school there instead. His dearest half-sister Jade, however, had been one of those ambitious souls who fled to the most expensive college she could get a full ride scholarship to, and thus she was one of those students coming home for the holidays.

Their father, always the busy man, was unavailable to go to pick up his daughter from the airport upon her return and put John in charge of making sure that Jade got home in one piece, or else he would be kicked out and expected to actually work on top of attend his community college classes. John agreed to the task set before him, half because he had really nothing to do except chum it up with his pals online on the day she came home, half because every time he went somewhere out of the suburbs, he had a good experience. The second thing rang true on this endeavor, and he wasn't even expecting it to.

As he drove to the airport on that sunny December day, a stray thought crossed his mind, one that John had never really liked pondering except when he was lying in bed after hearing his friends all talk about the subject. He was twenty years old, with his twenty-first birthday quickly approaching, and he had never kissed a girl in a romantic way. Hell, he had only ever held hands with his sister, and that was because their dad made them whenever they went somewhere up until they were teenagers. And he couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, Jade would be coming home and telling stories about all the guys she had gotten to know on a deeper, not-just-friends level at the prestigious science college she was going to.

The fact that his nerd sister may have gotten anywhere with a guy made John's blood boil. It made him angry, even though this was his _older_ sister that he was thinking about, and he had no reason at all to get angry about her life and her decisions. Maybe it was the comparisons he always made of himself to her, or maybe it was the fact that someone so nerdy and focused on her education could have possibly done anything romantic with anyone, but there was definitely something present that John didn't like.

And, as far as he was aware, there was not a thing he was ever going to be able to do about it. How would a guy who had never kissed a girl be able to tell his sister who may have kissed a guy that she wasn't allowed to do that? He wouldn't, that was for sure, not without being called out on his behavior and told to drop the subject completely. Besides, he thought, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to try and calm himself, there wasn't a chance in the world that she had kissed anyone. There were three things that were universally understood as truths and completely necessary: death, taxes, and the unattractiveness of the kids living in the Egbert household.

He took a deep breath. No use in working himself up about something that was unnecessary, after all. Besides, the parking lot at the airport was always a place that needed total concentration, and he wouldn't be able to focus on other drivers if he was getting angry about his sister and her locking lips with anyone. If anything, he should just watch the other drivers and not thinking about anyone kissing anything. Except maybe the guy beside him kissing a brick wall because he just cut through like three lanes of traffic and nearly ran into him. After the cursing and honking at that inconsiderate driver subsided, John took another deep breath and mentally prepared himself for what was going to happen. He was going to see his sister and be happy that she was home again and most definitely not bring up anything even somewhat romantic.

It was a good plan, and it was a plan that John had every intention of following through with. However, like all good plans, there was something that was going to stop it from being executed to perfection, and he would have to try his hardest to make sure that he could avoid that law of life. He parked the car without incident, made it to the correct pick-up area inside of the terminal without any trouble, and actually had a good handful of minutes to spend before Jade's flight would be arriving. That meant that he could relax a bit, maybe grab something to snack on at one of the overpriced shops in the terminal, and get everything off his mind.

That was a lot easier said than done, he knew, and while finding a close snack counter was easy enough, there wasn't anything to do aside from sit like a lonely loser and play on his phone while he ate his bag of chips he had ended up spending five dollars on. He regretted forgetting to bring some sort of game with him, and with his phone being necessary in case something happened and he couldn't find Jade, wasting the battery on it wasn't an option. That meant that he was going to be people watching, something that would have been infinitely more fun had he not been thinking about his lack of love life only a little while beforehand. From where he sat he had a good view of the people waiting by the exit of the secure area, and with every plane that landed, more happy couples and families were being reunited right in front of him.

Tears were shed. Children screamed. People were lifted off the ground and spun around. Everything was so much like on TV or in the movies, and it made John honestly a bit sad. He wasn't asking for much as he watched all these reunions, but he did want to find someone out there who would hold a sign while they waited for him to come back to them. He wanted someone who would bring their children to come pick him up at the airport, someone he could kiss passionately while they held each other tightly and swore never to let go again.

John was twenty years old and never really had an interest in women. The only girl he had ever really known in person was Jade, and they were basically two halves of the same person—and she had warped his image of what other women were like. Yeah, they may have been beautiful and not so into their education as his sister was, but deep down, he figured all women were smart and overbearing and bossy, just like Jade. But these guys, the ones he was watching taking part in the reunions, they seemed so happy to be in love.

He had to get his mind off of romance, and quick. He didn't need anyone, he was perfectly fine living his life the way he was, with no female intervention. John looked down at his chips, focusing on reading the label on the bag for a moment, before he looked back up to see if Jade was there yet. The sooner she arrived, the faster he could escape this place and all the love that was flying through it.

Across the walkway, standing against the wall looking like she did that regularly, was a woman, one that looked close to John's age. Her light brown hair half hung down her back and could be seen pressed up against the wall behind the crook of her back, the other half over her shoulder in a braid. She was looking in the direction of the exit to the secure area, which meant that she was only there picking someone up, something that (to his surprise) saddened John. He blinked a few times as he watched her play with the braid she had made, all while she waited.

There was an odd fluttering feeling that made its home in the pit of his stomach, one that he hadn't really felt before. He looked back down to the chips, hoping that taking his eyes off that woman would make the feeling go away, but all it did was make him think about if she was still standing there or not. When he glanced at her once more, he saw that she was looking in his direction, not necessarily at him, but over by him. He checked his surroundings, seeing if there was anyone else of interest beside him, but there was no one except an old man, and John was fairly certain that the beautiful lady across the way wasn't staring at a guy easily four times her age.

That meant that either she was hungry, or she was looking at him, and since John felt that he was about as attractive as a cooked carrot, it must have been the first option. As he watched, she looked away again, fiddling with her braid as she did. Whatever followed, he wasn't sure, because a wave of people came walking between them and he was unable to clearly see her over any of them. Which, honestly, that would have been fine with John if he wasn't so interested in this woman, but his interest inspired him to get up, grab his chips, and try to walk over to her to share with her the snack he had bought himself.

He was about halfway across the walkway when he saw her again, her arms wrapped around someone who seemed to look just like her, while someone with long, dark hair had their arms around both of them. His stomach sank a little, before he noticed that all three of them were girls, and the only ones of them that were kissing were the one he had found himself smitten with and the one who looked like an older version of her. That meant this was a sibling thing, not a romantic thing.

It meant he had a chance.

Or, at least, it could have, but someone grabbing him stopped all thoughts on the matter. "What, did you forget you were supposed to be looking for me?" Jade's voice asked right in his ear, as she squeezed him tightly. "Of course Dad sent the only person who wouldn't actually look for me."

"Oh, hey, Jade." John's voice, muffled by his sister's shoulder that she was pressing him into, sounded a bit downtrodden, as he tried to keep watch on that beautiful girl he had been interested in, but when he found where she had been standing, he saw that her and the others were walking away. The only saving grace he had was, as Jade hugged him tightly, he wasn't really expected to talk, and therefore he was able to hear one of those girls say a name that he hoped with all of his soul belonged to the beauty he had been watching.

He was going to have to keep that name in mind until he could get home to look her up, to see if she lived somewhere nearby or something. It was a task that seemed easy enough, if the part where John was going to be subjected to Jade talking about her semester for the whole ride home, and if she so much as mentioned one thing that he would get distracted by, then the whole mission was a bust. "Is something wrong with you? I'm, uh, not hugging you anymore, so if you wanted to move so we can go get my bags…" John jumped back, looking at his sister in shock. Had he really just spaced out while she was hugging him? "Okay, yep, something's wrong with you."

"Nothing's wrong with me! I was just thinking about something, that's all." He put his hands up in a defensive position, forgetting that he was holding a bag of chips, which he saw Jade eyeing suspiciously. "No, these chips aren't drugged."

"I wasn't going to ask if they were. You're going to let me have some, aren't you? I've been on an airplane for the past three hours, and airline food is more overpriced than those had to have been." She laughed and he gave a sigh of relief, handing her the bag so she could take a few chips. "Thanks, John. Now let's go get my stuff before they lose it. I don't want to not have clothes for break."

There was no sense in arguing with Jade's point, because she knew how airports worked better than John did, with all the flying back and forth from school that she did. They made their way through crowds of people down to the baggage claim, her talking to John and him pretending to be listening as he searched through the people for just another glimpse of that woman from before. She was overtaking his thoughts, and all he had done was maybe make eye contact with her once. He didn't know what love was, but he felt like he had fallen deep into its grasp at first sight.

"Something must really be up if I'm telling you about a Nic Cage movie marathon they had on campus and you're not responding," Jade snarkily said as she tapped her brother's shoulder, causing him momentary panic. "You're being weirder than normal, and I'm honestly worried to know why."

The words sort of spilled from John's mouth before he had the chance to come up with some elaborate lie to throw her off: "I saw a girl and I can't stop thinking about her." It was the absolute truth, and he sounded a lot like a lovestruck puppy as he admitted it. "I think I know her name, too, but what good's her name if I haven't actually met her."

"How do you know her name if you _haven't_ met her?" They had stopped walking, another large crowd of people impeding their progress, but this was the crowd surrounding the baggage claim that Jade needed to be at, so her question was left unanswered as she braved the mass of people to get her bags. While she was gone, John made no attempts to even care about where his sister was, looking around solely for that woman to maybe actually get her name from her this time.

He spotted her a few baggage claims away, one that was much less busy. Whoever had been the reason she was at the airport, they must have flown on a smaller plane or something, he thought, before deciding that this may have been his only shot to get the name from the source. Without worrying about what Jade would think, he walked past the conveyors that weren't in use, and got within a few feet of the brown-haired woman with her hair half braided before someone interrupted. "Yo, you comin' or not?" the dark-haired girl who had been hugging her before asked, catching the attention of the girl right as John reached out to her. "Come on Vris, we ain't got all day to be hangin' around here. You know how your sister is, all bitchy and shit when she gets home from school."

The woman rolled her eyes, flicking her braid over her shoulder so that it hung alongside her loose hair. "Whatever, Meenah. You know as well as I do that we don't care how she acts."

The name she just said in reference to the darker-haired one sounded oddly familiar to John, but he shook that thought from his mind. She wasn't the one that was important. The one that had been referred to as "Vris" was. "But I guess you're right. Might do us some good if we don't have to hear her whining the whole way home."

"That's the way I like it. Now let's blow this place before she realizes we're not with her." Meenah (that was her name, wasn't it?) motion for the other woman to follow her out, and before John could stop her she was gone, her beauty escaping John's grasp yet again, this time without the chance of a miracle happening to bring them together once more.

"John, what are you doing now?" It was Jade again, having found him with her bags in tow. Wordlessly, he pointed at the two ladies who were most of the way to the doors, trying to aim his finger more at the one he didn't really know the name of. "Oh, is one of them the girl you've got a thing for?" He nodded. "I've got some news for you."

It wasn't the reaction he was expecting and looked at her like she had just told him something outrageous. "News for me?" he repeated, raising his eyebrows up over the top of his glasses. "Is it that I'll never get to see her again? Because I figured that one and don't need you to break that to me."

"Nope, it's not that." Again, he acted as if what she was saying was completely outlandish, and he implored her for more. "John, if that was who I think it was, she lives not too far from the house. We went to school with her."

Now something was being said that _was_ very odd and weird, and his reaction was to shake his head. "Your glasses must be busted or something. I've never seen her before in my life—and before you use the 'our class was three hundred people big' excuse, I've looked through the yearbooks. No one in there was that beautiful."

Jade laughed. "Well, we did definitely go to school with her. Now can we go so I'm not lugging all this stuff around with me any longer?" She knocked one of her suitcases into him and it broke him from his bit of confusion just long enough to take his sister out to the car and get her bags into the back seat, but once he was driving and very nearly forgot to stop at the toll booth to leave, Jade knew that she needed to discuss this further with her brother. "You really don't remember her, do you?" she asked, looking at him while he tried to focus on the road before them.

"Not at all. Okay, maybe I didn't really pay attention to the girls in our class, because why should I? I didn't want to date any of them! But I think I would remember someone looking like her. Which I don't." He wanted to close his eyes and think about her beautiful face that he only caught glimpses of, the way she draped that braid over her shoulder, the dark honey color of her hair, but he couldn't. That would require not driving, and he was sort of the one who was behind the wheel. Dwelling on her memory would have to wait until he could get home and to the safety of his bedroom.

Er, that was to be able to bury his face into his pillow and muffle his screams on the matter, not to do anything else. Just seeing a very pretty girl that he may or may not have been smitten with wasn't going to inspire him to do anything else. Jade saw that he was struggling to pay attention to what he was doing (that, of course, was driving), especially when he nearly ran off the road, and she needed to distract him somehow. "Well, from what I saw, she seems to be a lot less insecure about herself. Maybe that's it. Maybe she was just too much of a withdrawn, hidden person back then for you to notice. But we definitely graduated with her."

"I'd remember her though!" Having to correct where he was steering, because he was drifting into another lane, John was adamant that he never had seen this girl before in his life. "I'd remember someone like her, someone just so beautiful…"

"Obviously you missed what I just said. She wasn't all that beautiful in school, but it's been a few years and she's different now." That was when Jade dropped her voice, hoping that this next tidbit would be enough to put an end to the conversation. "Besides, she's out of your league. I've seen her posts online. Her and that girl she was with—"

"Meenah. That girl's name was Meenah."

"—whatever. Point is, they're a thing. Like, every picture that Vriska posts of herself has that other girl in it." She shrugged, leaning back in her seat as the cogs in John's mind processed that bombshell. "So don't start creaming your pants over a girl you don't remember going to school with, because she isn't interested in someone like you."

He was silent for a few minutes, just trying to understand what Jade was saying to him. There was no way that she was a lesbian. None. Why else would she have made eye contact with him while he was sitting at that snack spot? She wouldn't have, not unless she was interested in the dweeb of a guy that he was. "I'm sorry, can't hear you over the sound of the fact that she _looked at me_." He made sure to emphasize the last three words.

"I'm looking at you now. Doesn't mean I'm into you." A laugh escaped Jade. "Okay, that was a bad example. Of course I'm not into you. We're siblings."

"You're just guessing that they're together, anyway. From pictures." So maybe Jade was right about them having gone to school together, if she had a way to see that beauty's (her name was Vriska, wasn't it?) pictures online, but just because she was right about that didn't mean that she was right about anything else. "There's no proof otherwise."

"They were together at the airport, weren't they? Doesn't that seem a bit weird to you?" She was trying to get into his head, trying to get his thoughts off this woman he seemed to have fallen in love with too quickly. Last thing she wanted was to go her entire winter break from school listening to her brother go on and on about how much he wanted this girl. "Let me guess, you're trying to come up with some way to say it doesn't seem weird."

He was. "Yeah, of course I am. I don't want to think that they were together. I want to think that maybe I'll run into her again and not be interrupted by someone coming home, or someone coming to get her to leave." John had to focus on the road now, as he started getting closer back to home where the traffic picked up. He couldn't think more about Vriska or Meenah or what felt like his first crush on a girl ever. He had to think about getting his sister back to the house safe.

But once they were home and he could get alone, he spent a long while staring at the old movie posters on his walls, hoping that Vriska wasn't a lesbian, and that she maybe had the same interests he did.

* * *

A few days later, John was already tired of having Jade back home. Yes, it was nice to know that his sister was under the same roof he was, but it was also a terrible feeling, as she had things to hold over his head that weren't just her school accomplishments. Whenever they were in the same room, she'd bring up that he had fallen in love with someone who never would love him, and he knew his cheeks would turn red as he denied it. But really, she wasn't lying about the "falling in love" part, because he would get butterflies that would overtake his stomach whenever Vriska was so much as mentioned.

He had gotten the idea to find her Facebook profile the day he had seen her, thanks to what Jade had said about it, and while he wasn't going to go and add her as a friend (after all, they obviously hadn't known each other in school, so that would be a bit creepy), he was able to stalk at least her more recent posts due to her lacking security preferences. Jade really hadn't been lying about the fact that all of her pictures made it seem like her and Meenah were, well, a thing. They were kissing each other on the cheek, holding hands, and doing everything like he assumed a couple would be, but there was something odd about it. Something that gave him hope.

That was the fact that Vriska had her relationship status set to "single" and her preference set to "men". Both of those made him question what was happening, if she was denying her relationship to the world or if it wasn't a thing at all. He'd ask, but he didn't know the girl. He couldn't just message her and see what she said about it, like he could with his friends, no matter if she was open about it or not. Based on the pictures she had, she seemed like the kind of person who would be open to correcting misinformation about her love life.

"You know what? I'm out of here. Maybe when I come back, you'll stop bugging me with this." It was right after another bout of teasing, and it was enough to finally push John over the edge to need a long walk to get away from Jade for a little bit. She was having too much fun getting under his skin about the situation, and he needed some space before he hurt her. Their dad wasn't home and he had the car keys with him, so a drive to the mall wasn't going to happen, thus the idea for a long walk that would inevitably find its halfway point at the convenience store at the edge of the neighborhood was conceived.

He grabbed his jacket and house key and left, leaving Jade standing in the house confused about what had just happened, not really sure how to process the fact that her twenty-year-old brother had just thrown a hissy fit and left before her eyes. He walked down the street and cut across a playground, no one around to hear him muttering to himself about how dumb it was that Jade wouldn't leave him alone about things. John was smart enough to know that she was doing it because it was a natural thing for siblings to tease about crushes, but he didn't like it. She should have been supportive of him and who he had fallen hard for.

Dusk was beginning to settle in over the neighborhood when he made it to his destination. The man behind the counter was the same as always, and he greeted John with a wave and a hello, asking him what brought him out at that time. He shrugged and it was enough of the answer for the man, who was used to seeing him around. John wanted to get out of the man's line of sight as fast as he could, because the last thing he wanted at that moment was to get involved in a conversation that would end up with him explaining what was going through his mind and his life. He ducked around the shelves, heading to the back wall where the cases of sodas were.

The least he could do while he was there was buy something and make the trip useful. Looking at all the drinks, John tried to remember what kind of soda Jade liked, to bring her back as a way to apologize for leaving like he had. When he couldn't remember, almost completely because thinking of her reminded him about how mad he was that she had been teasing him, he figured that just grabbing something he liked would be good enough. He pulled out two of the drinks that were on sale and closed the door to the display, thinking about how he should grab some snacks to go with it, but didn't pay attention when he turned to go to the candy aisle, and collided with someone. "Oh shit, sorry," he said, stepping back and hoping that the person wasn't too mad.

The face he had been lusting after for days looked back at him, her lips curled to make some comment but when she saw him, her mouth went to a neutral position, then to a shocked one. "Didn't I see you at the airport the other day?" she asked, looking at him through glasses he didn't remember her having. "The guy with the chips? John?"

He had quite literally run straight into Vriska, and she remembered him.

What a chain of events.

* * *

**A/N: This is the first of five chapters to the birthday fic I've written for my dear boyfriend kamikaze2007. (: If you're reading this, I hope you enjoy it and will stick around, as it will update every Monday, ending on March 2nd, which is his actual birthday (his 21st birthday, at that). **


	2. Don't Be Surprised If I Love You

They stood there for a few minutes, just looking at each other. He had meekly nodded at her after she had correctly guessed his name, and she didn't seem to know what to say in response to that. After all, what were the odds? Two people that had gone to school together but never really known each other running into each other two times within a week? That just didn't happen unless it was in a fairy tale. Although fairy tales tended to happen in more beautiful locations, not an airport and the drink section of a store.

"How do you know who I am?" John asked when he found the words to speak. "I mean, we never talked before this. Kinda weird that you know my name, don't you think?" He was trying his hardest to keep calm, to keep it completely unobvious that he had fallen hard for her, but as he stared at her and her honey locks and her blue eyes that looked more like the depths of the ocean than the sky, he couldn't help but feel like he was making it too noticeable that he had a thing for her. "I m-mean, you don't have to answer that. That was really pushy of me."

"No, I was honestly surprised you didn't ask right away." She smiled at him, and while he thought it was about the cutest thing he had ever had aimed at him, it was a smile that seemed fake and forced. "We went to school together, duh. I heard about all you from other people, but especially Jade. Man, we would talk about you like every day."

His mouth hung open a bit in surprise. "Oh, so you know of me because of my sister. Great. Probably think I'm a dweeb or something, huh?" He was honestly a bit hurt that Jade had failed to mention that she had actually personally known Vriska, because that information would have made the entire situation go by a little easier. Maybe Jade had been trying to protect him from inevitable heartbreak at the hands of this goddess. "Okay, no, don't answer that one. I'll just go and save you the trouble of telling me how terrible I am."

As he began to step away backwards, he remembered that he had intended to go get some snacks when he had run into Vriska in the first place, and so he had to find a way to get past her, lest he go back up to the front and get talked to by the cashier. When he tried to step beside her, she moved in front of him, causing another collision. "No, don't go. Obviously there's a reason we've seen each other twice recently, and now it's our job to figure out what it is. You can't be running off."

"You make it sound like this is a video game encounter or something." John stepped backwards again, getting to look at that smile on Vriska's face—and this time it seemed a whole like more genuine than before. "Wait, are you trying to make this sound like that?"

"There's really no other way to put it." She looked down at the drinks she was carrying, then to the sodas in his arms, and scrunched her face in thought. "I think we're like two characters in a game who have to meet for something big, something exciting, to happen next. What's going to happen next, I don't know."

He liked hearing her talk like life was a game, but he knew that it was getting dark out and he needed to get back home before it was too much later. "I think what's going to happen next is that I'm going to get the snacks I need and then go home." The words came out more snappish than he had intended, but she didn't seem to be too hurt by it, just giving a shrug and stepping aside to let him through. After he had passed her he turned to see if she was still standing there, but to his surprise she had turned around and was now following him. "Let me guess, still going with that 'video game character' thing you were talking about."

"Nah, I just need to pick up some snacks too. My sister would never let me hear the end of it if I left without getting what I came here for." So they went to the aisle that was lined on both sides with all sorts of candies and munchies, each picking out whatever it was that drew them there, making sure to not make physical contact with one another again through the entire ordeal. Whenever he saw her out of the corner of his eye, John couldn't help but be amazed at how beautiful Vriska was, especially with as close as he was (and how blind he was through his peripheral vision).

"Yo, Vriska, what the shell you doin'?" It was a voice John remembered very well, as it had come from the person who had ruined his chance with this beauty the last time he had one. Where she had come from, he wasn't sure, but all he knew was that Meenah was there, and he was most likely about to have every romantic dream about a real person that he had ever had crushed before his eyes. Beside him, he saw Vriska stand up tall and that gave him the cue to straighten his back as well and scurry over to the counter, making sure to ignore all small talk from the cashier as he listened to what was happening between the ladies. "You gettin' us some snacks?"

"That was what we came to get, wasn't it?" Vriska replied, and although John couldn't see it, he would have loved to have known that she shoved the armfuls of goodies she had into Meenah's unsuspecting grasp. "There. I gathered it, you pay for it."

A loud groan filled the air, coming from Meenah. "No way gillfrond, this ain't my shit to be buying. Your sister and I used to be buds, but we don't hang anymore. You're lucky I love you, or else I'd be dumpin' this and you." Hearing that sent shivers down John's spine. They were together, weren't they? That confirmed it, and he had just given in to letting his hopes soar that he had a chance with the brunette bombshell. "Now let's pay and get outta here. Gotta hot date tonight."

"You mean like every night." It was a teasing response, one that John didn't hear due to him focusing on his crushed dreams. In fact, he didn't pay attention to a single word of their playful banter until he was about to leave and they were paying for their things, when he heard Vriska call out his name. "John, wait!"

"Wait?" He froze, looking over his shoulder to see Vriska smiling at him and waving for him to come back, which he did without hesitation. "Okay, I'll wait. What do you want? It's dark and I need to get home."

Vriska held up a finger for him to wait a second, as Meenah finishing paying for everything, and once the black-haired woman was done and holding the bag of goods she had just purchased, she was forcibly turned to see John. "Meenah, this is John. Went to school with him, but we didn't really know each other until the other day."

"You're tellin' me this scrawny-ass fuck is the kid you can't shut your trap about?" Meenah raised her pierced eyebrow as she looked John over, all while he stood with his own bag in hand, feeling only minimally awkward about what was happening. "Ain't buying it. Who is he, reely, and why should I care?"

"This really is him. And since he stayed here so late to talk to me while I waited around for you to do whatever it was you needed to do behind the building," this part made the man at the counter sigh, knowing exactly what was being referred to, "he kept me company. So we're going to give him a ride home."

"Oh shell no. That will make me late for my date, and you know damn well that I can't do that. Not tonight." Meenah would have stormed out of the place if it wasn't for Vriska grabbing her arm and stopping her in her tracks. "Let go of me! I've got places I gotta get!"

"If it's going to be this much of a problem, I really can walk home. It's not too dark out, and I know the way back. I'm not a little kid." That was a dig at what he had been called moments before, and by the way he saw Meenah glare at him when he said it, he knew that she had caught on to what he was doing. "So, uh, I'll see you later I guess, Vriska." Saying her name felt weird on his lips, as if he wasn't supposed to be doing it; before he could get wrapped up in that train of thought, he turned tail and ran out of the store, leaving behind him the two ladies, one of which seemed happy to see him go, the other who looked slightly saddened at his sudden departure.

When John made it home, he was greeted by his dad wondering where he had been, to which he showed off the bag from the store and explained that he just needed a snack for later in the night. He was nearly able to make it to his room without Jade finding him, but when she inevitably stopped him from opening his bedroom door, he gave her what he had bought for her and asked her, in the most forced and polite way he could, to leave him alone for a while. She got the hint and soon he was very much on his own, laying on his bed just processing what had happened to him.

His memories were just getting to the part where he heard the incriminating comment that he assumed meant the girls were a thing when he heard a noise on his computer. He didn't normally get notifications of any kind, which led him to leaving his windows open and his volume on, so being able to hear the ping of someone wanting to interact with him on his Facebook was an odd experience, made all the stranger when he pulled himself off the bed and to his laptop.

It was a notification for a friend request, from one honey-haired, blue-eyes Vriska Serket. He accepted it without any second thought, because rejecting it would seem suspicious and he had wanted to get to be her friend on there for days. It was the perfect cap to a day of strange events, and little did he know that it was only going to get better and stranger from there.

* * *

The next few weeks were full of important events for the family. Since Jade had been so close to break as it was, she hadn't come home for Thanksgiving dinner, nor had she gotten to celebrate her big twenty-first birthday, and that meant that she needed to get to experience both of those in the biggest and best way that her dad could come up with. John wasn't exactly one for the parties that the Egbert clan liked to hold, but he figured that, with his relationship with Jade still in rocky waters due to her treatment of his crush, he could be excused from all festivities and everyone would understand.

After all, he _had_ been home for Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family, and he wasn't yet old enough to drink and be merry. Him being gone for the celebrations wouldn't be that big of a deal, at least, not in his mind. Their father had a different idea, and quite literally forced his son into being present, with the other option being finding a new place of residence. John wasn't going to let himself be kicked out over some little fight with Jade, and thus he had no choice but to be there when everything went down.

It was already bad enough that John was forced to have spent Thanksgiving dinner with these people, but seeing them all again for Jade's party was a different sort of hell. For one, holiday dinners were a "one glass of wine" sort of ordeal, and when his relatives were barely buzzed, they were easy to avoid but impossible to get away from once they had him in their grasps. For two, this wasn't being considered a holiday dinner, but instead a party, and parties were a whole different animal. And for three, John was going to be the only person present not allowed to drink. Even if he forgot about the fact that he wasn't getting along with Jade and this was her party, he was still going to hate being the only sober person.

People started showing up around nightfall, an early hour since it was just about winter time, and when John had attempted to go into his room to grab something to distract him from all the terrible things to come, he had found that his door was locked and a note attached, courtesy of his dad, that explained that it would remain locked until the party was over. "Great," he muttered, turning back to go downstairs. "Looks like I'll be bored out of my mind for all of this."

"Stop being such an ass, please." It was Jade, coming from her room and just happening to run into him in the hall. "This is my late twenty-first birthday party, and the last thing I need is you ruining it for me."

"Trust me. If I had my way, I'd be far from here." He rolled his eyes at the huffy breath his sister gave at that, pushing past him to bound down the stairs in some old prom dress she had rescued from her closet. "I should have gotten a job this past semester, saved up the money to go visit Dave or someone actually decent. At least if I wasn't in the state, Dad wouldn't force me to be here."

Yells from downstairs caught his attention, voices that he cringed in hearing. He could easily make out the Southern accent that his cousin Jane had, and he wondered if the guy she had been dating at Thanksgiving was there with her. If he was, that was something else to add to the list of terrible things about this event, fitting right in between the fact that everyone would be drinking and the fact that John wouldn't be. If he wasn't, well, maybe Jane would have found someone that wouldn't criticize her for her love of baking and lack of love of adventuring.

Still didn't make John want to go downstairs any more. Not even when he heard laughter coming from the kitchen, where he assumed his dad, grandma, maybe Jade's grandpa, and Jane (plus her plus-one) were. Dealing with anyone, even people he liked, was not on the top of his priority list, and if he could get through the night without his phone, without any games, and without talking to anyone, he would be a happy guy.

No such luck, naturally. Someone called for him in the kitchen and he had to go, taking the stairs as slowly as he possibly could before walking through the living room and standing in the doorway to the kitchen. His grandma, his dearest Nanna, was waiting there for him, her arms wide open and the faint smell of wine on her, and he had to hug her. While he was enveloped in her arms, he looked to see Jade being hugged by her bear of a grandfather, a man that John accepted as his own grandpa even though they weren't related by blood. And behind them was the curvaceous woman he knew was his cousin Jane, holding hands and giggling with some tall and slender blonde that he had never seen before.

Once he had broken away from the hug, and turned down a hug from Jade's grandpa, although they did fist bump, he made his way to standing before Jane and her companion. "So, uh, who's this?" he asked, motioning to the unknown woman. "You didn't bring her when you were here last month."

"John, don't be so rude. I told you I only brought Jake with me last time because he begged to come and have some of Nanna's pie, since she makes it so much better than I do." Her voice dripping with a sweet Southern accent, Jane turned to who she had with her. "Roxy, dear, this is my little cousin John."

Calling him "little" was strange coming from Jane, who stood barely five feet tall while John was closer to six feet, and this Roxy woman was almost at his level, although aided by high heels. "He looks like a lot of fun," she said, grinning at him, and he realized that this girl was drunk off her ass already. "Can't wait to get to see him drink. Bet he's as big 'a lightweight as you are, Janey."

"Wouldn't know. His dad's really strict with the 'no kids drinking' thing." Jane reached up to ruffle John's hair, and he bent down to let her successfully do it. "He's a young'n, that's for sure. Won't be of age until next year. Promised him that when he turns twenty-one, we'll go barhopping all night."

"Only because you want to be here to celebrate it, and it's your birthday too so we'll both get free drinks." After a few seconds of feeling his cousin's pudgy fingers in his hair he stood back to full height, almost causing her to topple over in the process. "Whoops, sorry Jane. Didn't think you would fall."

"She's had a few drinks today already. The hotel we're staying at has a cool minibar and, duh, we've been trying it all." Roxy seemed so proud of what she was saying, until she realized she hadn't actually gotten to properly meet John. She stuck her hand that wasn't firmly grasping Jane out, and John grabbed it for a quick shake. "Name's Roxy Lalonde. I do lots of stuff but most of it involves sitting pretty at the bake shop."

John nodded. "And my name's John. Glad we've gotten this taken care of." She seemed nice, and she was a step up from the last person Jane had brought over, but there was something to Roxy that he really didn't like. Maybe it was her "perpetual drunk" vibe that she was giving off, or maybe it was the fact that she was nearly as twig-like as he and Jade were, and they weren't forced to eat the cakes that the family was big on baking. Their dad did bake, but he understood that his kids weren't huge fans of the confections. Jane, like the Nanna who raised her, had no real understanding of someone not liking to snack on anything, and she tended to force her love interests into eating whatever she baked. Roxy just didn't seem like the type of woman to be okay with shoveling baked goods into her mouth whenever they were presented before her.

"It's weird, you and your sister look nothing like Janey." Roxy's words were slightly slurred, and she had to correct herself twice on referring to Jade as his sister, not his brother. "I don't get it. She says that you guys used to look identical or something."

"Emphasis on the 'used to' part there, dear." Jane gave a laugh that sounded soft and light. "Back when we were all little and living close together, we'd all play and it would be nearly impossible to pick us out from each other. They've always been tall, even when we were just little tykes."

"Jane, you act like she's going to remember this in the morning," John whined, not wanting to hear stories of when he was a gangly child. "Can't you save the embarrassing tales for some other time?"

She rolled her eyes and glared up at him. "You're lucky I love you, because I guess I can save them for later. Although, with how I get when I'm drinking, you may get to hear more of this than you had wanted to." It was at least a firm "not at the moment", and John was going to run with that as long as he could. Of course, he would first have to get away from his cousin and her girlfriend, which was a lot harder said than done. "Aren't you going to show me and Roxy around the house?" she asked, putting a smile on her lips.

"You know how the house is set up, though. Can't you do it yourself?" Asking Jane a question like that right after the one he had just asked was too much, and she stomped on his foot in return. He yelped, getting the attention of everyone else, and now he just wouldn't be able to turn his cousin's request down if everyone was watching. "Okay, you win, I'll show you around the house." Under his breath, barely loud enough for himself to hear it, he added, "Good thing your fat ass didn't break my foot."

"I heard that, John." To retaliate, Jane stepped on his other foot and he nearly cried, a tear forming in one eye. "Now get to walking before I use this 'fat ass' to hurt you some other way."

"I'd pay to watch you sit on 'im," Roxy chimed in, causing herself and Jane to dissolve into laughter, all while John mentally cursed out his cousin for hurting him twice and expecting him to still give a tour of a house she must have known by heart. He went through with it, only because he didn't want to have any more pain inflicted on him by his cousin, and, as he expected, he made it one room before he was told to stop, that she could handle it on her own—something he was thankful for, but would have liked a lot better if he was able to get into his own bedroom to escape.

For most of the night, he sat on the stairs and listened to everyone be drunk and merry, only having to move out of the way if someone was going upstairs to look at the pictures on the wall, and then he was expected to help them back down without incident. It made for a very boring and incredibly dull night, especially without the ability to record any of what he was seeing and hearing to show them when they were hungover and regretting everything. "Yo, John, what are you doing?" If he had thought Roxy's words were slurred earlier in the night, then what he was hearing come from Jade's mouth was an absolute waterslide. Every letter crashed into the following ones like it had no idea where it was, and he really wished she would know how absolutely dumb she sounded. "Come on, you've gotta be here for this."

"For what, cake cutting time? No thanks." He really did not want to go downstairs and have to interact with his drunk family, especially not at his sister's insistence, and most definitely not if baked items were involved. "Don't need Jane trying to fatten me up today."

"It's not for cake," Jade replied, nearly collapsing before John on the first step. "Just come with me and you'll see what it's for."

He sighed, getting up and helping her back to her feet, before going back into the kitchen with her. The room smelled incredibly strong of alcohols, enough that it first made John question if he would be able to get contact drunk from the smell, and everyone was sitting around the table, watching the two enter with glazed-over eyes. "Uh, yeah, this doesn't look like it's going to be very fun," he said as he was shoved into a chair, Jade taking the seat next to him. "What's going on here?"

"We're telling secrets," Jade loudly whispered in response, before laughing. "And I'm gonna tell them yours, now that you're here and I can."

"Hold on, mine? You don't even know any secrets of mine!" No sooner had he said those words did it hit John that he did have a secret that Jade knew, one that was the entire reason he was mad at her in the first place. "Wait, Jade, don't say it. It's not worth it."

"Not worth it? Jane's told us all about how lesbians get it on, and Roxy's told us a lot about how when Jane gets drunk like this, she likes having entire cakes shoved down her throat followed with some fancy wine. Your secret's totally tame compared to that." As Jade had spoken, the mentioned parties showed that they were only half listening waved at him, and he could see that at least the second thing said was true, as there was frosting smeared all over his cousin's face. "Now just let me say it and we'll call it a night. Deal?"

He shook his head rapidly, hoping it would get the point across to his sister. "No can do, Jade. You tell them that and, if they remember it, I'll never hear the end of it."

"No one's gonna remember. That's the fun of all this." She hiccupped, and it was clear that she was way drunker than she had ever intended to get, a great way to celebrate her late twenty-first birthday. "I'm gonna say it."

"You are not going to say it."

"Everyone," Jade said, raising her voice to near eardrum-splitting levels, "I'm gonna tell you John's secret now since he's lame and not drunk like the rest of us." It got everyone's attention, or so it seemed, and she lowered her voice to continue. "He's totally got a crush on this one chick that we went to school with. But it sucks for him because she's not into guys and he doesn't get it. Sometimes he talks about her in his sleep and it's so pathetic, hm?"

The room filled with laughter, and John could feel his cheeks lighting up with a blush. "I don't talk about her in my sleep, and even if I did, how would you know it?" he asked, standing up to make himself seem more intimidating. A noodle child like him, though, could never seem scary to someone beyond drunk, and she playfully pushed him aside. "Hey! This isn't funny! She's into guys and she likes me, I swear!"

"You keep telling yourself that, but she's so weird and she doesn't like you, John. No one could ever like you like that." Jade sounded so proud of herself, although it was mostly the alcohol talking. "We're not meant to have someone, and you know, that's okay. Don't need to get people dragged into the weird side of this family."

Although it was against his best judgment, John punched at his sister then, in an attempt to get her to shut up. He hadn't expected her to attempt to stand up at that moment, causing his fist to connect with her stomach, and there was only a second where they looked at each other and she seemed to be in pain before everything went worse than it already had been. She was too drunk, and the force was enough to make her sick, him being the target of the vomit she was forced into expelling. The laughter stopped when the family saw what was happening, but they too were incredibly drunk and unable to come up with some solution to the problem John had accidentally caused.

When all was said and done, she didn't seem the least bit bothered that she had been throwing up all over her brother, and he was absolutely mortified of ever being around Jade while she was drunk again. Thanks to their dad being inebriated to the point of uselessness, John spent the night asleep nude on the bathroom floor, after having taken a shower to clean himself of his sister's vomit and not having any clean clothes to change into, as they were all locked in his bedroom. When morning came, everyone was hungover and barely responsive, as he had figured they would be, but he was able to get back into his room to put some clothes on and go back downstairs to see the damage.

Everyone had passed out where they had sat, the lone exception being Jade, who had fallen asleep on the couch and was just starting to wake up when he came downstairs. "Hey, do you remember anything from last night?" he asked her when he saw her and she waved at him. "Or is it all a big blur?"

"Last night? Last thing I remember is getting dared to chug something. Why do you ask?" She was blinking a lot, her eyes clearly sensitive to the light filling the room, and after he handed her a pillow and she thanked him for it, she repeated her question, adding, "Don't tell me something bad happened."

"Something bad? Oh, just you ruining my life in front of our drunken family, then us fighting and you getting sick all over me." As she couldn't see him, John made a sour face at the memory without any thoughts of consequences, and she groaned at his words. "It was pretty terrible, let me tell you. But if you don't remember it, then I doubt they would."

"I doubt it too. Look, if I hurt you with something I said, I didn't mean it." She smiled, her lips barely visible from underneath the pillow. "But if I 'ruined' your life, I was probably talking about Vriska, and if I was talking about her, I bet I called her a lesbian."

"Not exactly." His eyes shifted to the floor. "But you were talking about her."

"So I didn't call her a lesbian, good. That would have been awkward, especially since our cousin is a lesbian. And Vriska isn't." The last three words were rushed, as if Jade didn't want John to hear them. But he did, even if he didn't say it, and he made sure to hold those three words close to his heart. The day dragged on, with people needing him and his completely healthy body to do things for him, but when the family decided it was time to go and it was just him, his sister, and their dad in the house once more, he locked himself in his room, ready to do something he had been scared to do ever since he and Vriska had become friends online: he was going to grow some balls and message her.

* * *

**A/N: I know I just posted the first chapter the other day, but I have a schedule to keep and this fic will be updating on Mondays from now until it's finished. :)**

**Also, lemme know if you're liking it! I had a lot of fun writing it and would love to know if y'all enjoy what I am so proud of!**


	3. For All That You Are

After checking and double checking his door to make sure it was locked, John decided it was go time, and there would be nothing to stop him from talking to her again. He pulled up her profile and clicked the button to send a message, and promptly froze in thought. What could he send her that wouldn't seem like he was being obsessive or clingy? Would something as simple as a hello work in this situation? He didn't have the time or ability to ask someone who would possibly know, and that meant he just had to go for it.

The message he sent was short and to the point, a "hi, how are you?" that was always a universal conversation started. It showed that she was online for a moment after he clicked to send it, but then she went offline with no response, his only saving grace being that she hadn't seen the message yet. What did that mean, that she saw he was trying to contact her and that she didn't want to talk? Maybe she was just busy and didn't have the time to be talking to anyone, but what would she have been doing on Facebook in the first place if that were indeed the case?

Okay, maybe thinking like that was wrong on his part. He knew that he would get online and look around when he was supposed to be doing other things, and so it wasn't right of him to be judging Vriska for possibly doing the same thing. Besides, it wasn't like she had seen his message and refused to respond, so he had no reason at all to be getting worried that he was being purposely ignored.

Except, he realized a few minutes later, that he probably was, and that Vriska would never want to actually talk to him again, and that he was just wasting his time pining over someone that was completely out of his league. "John, are you barricading yourself in there?" he heard Jade asking from the other side of the door, and his first instinct was to ignore her. She began knocking loudly, almost to the point of being unable to be ignored, but he stayed strong, keeping ignoring her for a solid ten minutes while he watched the computer screen and waited to see when he would get a response. "Dude, come on, open up," she said, still banging on the door. "It's really important."

"Can't be that important," he replied, yelling over the sound of her knocking. "Especially since you're probably still hungover or you're drinking again."

"John, your damn 'girlfriend' is messaging me asking how to even talk to you." The knocks stopped, giving him the chance to say something back, but he refrained, understanding immediately what that meant. Vriska had seen that it was him messaging her, and she didn't know how to reply. "Should I tell her to talk nerdy to you?"

He grinned, wanting to cackle like a madman at the suggestion. "Yes, do that! I'd love to see what kind of fake nerd stuff she could pull, especially since she's already done the video game referencing at me. Bet she can't top that." Boy was he wrong, because moments later his computer was pinging with the sound of a response, and he was laughing for real until he read it. Turned out that Vriska was at least somewhat well-versed in cheesy movies, or at least, she knew how to look things up at Jade's suggestion. It was something, though, and that was what counted.

His response to her was to ask where she knew her reference from, and when she said that she knew it because she had seen the movie it hailed from a few times, his suspicions were raised a bit more. There was no way a beautiful girl like her spent her time watching terrible Matthew McConaughey movies, and he made sure to call her out on that lie. "It's not a lie," she replied, her words coming just seconds after his accusation had been sent, "and, just so you know, I've seen a lot of movies that I bet you like. Sometimes there's nothing to do but pop in a chick flick and watch it."

"Excuse you, but those are not 'chick flicks'. They are gems in the history of film, and they should be appreciated." John was beginning to rethink this crush he had. Could he let himself want to date someone who referred to such movies as "chick flicks"? Sure, they were romantic, and sure they were bad and sappy, but they had a great actor in them and therefore had to be better than what that title denoted. "I don't think we can be friends if you think of them that way."

"Whatever," she typed, drawing every single letter out eight times. "I happen to know from browsing your profile that you have a bit of a boner for Nic Cage, and I can't argue with you on that front. Maybe we should meet up and watch some of his movies sometime to forget that this fight happened." She finished that sentence with an emoticon that consisted of four semicolons and a parenthesis that made it into some weird, mutated smiley, and there was something charming about it to John.

Then it sank in: that was sort of, kind of, a suggestion for a date. It would involve marathoning Nic Cage movies into the night, but a date was a date and he'd never been on one before, let alone had one suggested to him in such a manner. "Yeah, okay, we should do that. This weekend sound good to you?" Before he really caught what he was doing, he was furthering the discussion of them having a date, and she was typing some sort of response.

It came a minute later, every second of which was spent with John watching the screen, waiting for the beautiful words he was hoping were going to grace it. "You got it, Egbert. I'll be at your place at noon on Saturday. You better have popcorn and the movies ready and waiting for me." She hopped offline after sending that, with the accompanying four colons and a parenthesis smile, which he hoped meant that she was being serious with what she had just talked about.

If she was, it was going to be the first time in his life that John would be spending time with a girl that he wasn't related to for more than a class period. Most of him hoped that she would be coming to his door and watching all those movies with him, but part of him feared that it wasn't going to happen, and that she was just playing him like a fiddle. But Saturday came, and with it came the appearance of one honey-haired Vriska appearing at his front door, eight minutes after noon. With her she brought a bag of candy and some games, for "in case the movies got too boring" for them.

"I figured you played games, from what you had said at the store that day," John told her after he had let her in and they had gone up to his bedroom. His dad and Jade were both gone for the day, which meant that he was able to do whatever he wanted, and if that meant letting this girl into his room to use his big TV, then that was what he was going to do. "I didn't think you'd want to play something over watching Nic Cage's mug on the screen, though."

"Trust me, this isn't for before the marathon. This is for when we need a break. I can only stomach so much of his action-packed goodness before I get sick." Vriska set the games down on John's bed, as well as the bag she had brought with her, that contained two different game systems. "But when we're ready to play games, you can bet that I'm ready to kick your ass."

"I'm sorry, what did you just say?" John had Vriska repeat the last sentence, and when she was done he laughed. "Girls aren't good at games, Vriska. I don't know who you play against, but they're probably no challenge if you can beat them. When we get to that, I'll make sure you see what a real competitor is like." He was bragging, but why shouldn't he be? He never knew a girl who enjoyed the sort of gaming that he did, and since he hadn't met one before her, she had to be bad at it.

Before he could see if he was right, which he had to have been (Vriska had refused to comment on what he said and had instead told him to start the movies), they needed to watch a Nic Cage flick or two. Vriska was right in that they were hard to stomach in mass quality, but when starting with a great film such as Con Air, why would they ever want to stop watching the greatness on the screen? Well, not being able to take any of the movie seriously, especially when they were singing along and quoting line-for-line, was a big part of it. When the credits began to roll, they were rolling laughter on the floor, having found their memorizations of the movie absolutely hilarious.

"So, shall we take a break now and see who's boss at games?" Vriska asked, motioning to the bag she had brought with her. "Or one more movie?"

John thought for a moment, before reaching for the case to National Treasure. "One more movie. This time with less singing and more action." She rolled her eyes but accepted his terms, and so they watched just one more movie before all hell was to break loose and the video games were to start being played. True to his word, there was more action (arguably, of course, because Vriska was partial to the plane hijacking) and much less singing between them, and when the credits rolled she made her offer again. This time, John nodded. "Set them up. Can't wait to kick your ass, not have you kick mine."

Falser words had never before been spoken. Turns out, Vriska was really freaking good at video games, and beat John countless times with ease. His gloating had all been for naught, and she was having a blast proving to him how wrong he was. "Sorry John, thought you were saying something about being good at games. Thought I needed to bust out my skills that I can't use against Meenah or my sister." Vriska was laughing at the umpteenth victory screen in her favor, finding it absolutely hilarious that she won so quickly and so many times. "Are you going easy on me? Because if you are, you need to stop."

"You have to be cheating," he spat in response, yanking her controller from her hands to investigate. "Must have a turbo on or something, because no person should be able to win against someone else that quickly, especially not someone who's usually good at games!"

"Aw, don't throw a fit. Maybe it would be better if we played a game you've got here, instead of one I brought with me." John took that advice to heart and they switched the setup so that they were playing a game of his instead, with the same exact results. For being a girl, Vriska was damn great at video games, and she was schooling John at every chance she got. "Okay, maybe it's not the game. Maybe you're just bad."  
He threw his hands, and controller, up in exasperation, the controller flying and hitting Vriska in the face. "I am not bad at games!" he yelled, before hearing her make noises out of pain. "Wait, shit, did I just hurt you?"

"No, not really." Her voice was small and soft, as if it was a bit scared, and when he looked at her he saw that she was covering her left eye. "Just hit my eye, that's all. This is why I'm supposed to wear my glasses out places…"

He tilted his head to one side. "So that flying controllers don't hit you in the face?"

"So that something doesn't knock my eye out." The sentence she said didn't make any sense to John, until he looked down and saw what looked like a glass marble on the floor, and his face paled. Was that this girl's eye? He bent down and picked it up, handing it to Vriska so that she could run out of the room and take care of it. When she came back, he noticed that, while her right eye moved around like a normal eye would, her left one stayed stationary, as if he had broken it. "Sorry about that. Should have warned you that was something that sometimes happens."

"You didn't need to warn me of anything," he said, trying to not look so much at her eye that wasn't moving. "It wasn't something that I needed to know."

"Apparently it was, because you threw something and it hit me." Sitting back on the bed in a huff, Vriska covered her eye to make sure John wouldn't keep looking at it. "But whatever, you didn't know, it's all in the past. Shall we keep gaming?"

He blinked a few times, looking from her to the TV screen and back as he did. "Uh, don't think I understand. Your eye just fell out on the floor, and you still want to play games? Isn't that, you know, going to give me an advantage?"

"I've been playing with one working eye this whole time, dumbass. Can't see out of the left one, not now, not ever. You just suck so much that a girl who's blind in one eye can kick your ass at games." Vriska grabbed her controller and dropped her hand from over her eye to ready herself. "Come on, one more round. Then back to movies."

Never one to say no to a challenge, especially one where he had been told he was even worse than he thought, John accepted the offer, only to meet the same crushing defeat he had every time before. "Damn, you're really good at this stuff," he admitted, once they were done and he was going to set up their next movie. "Like, how? If you can't see out of one eye, shouldn't that make you have a huge disadvantage?"

"It does, don't worry," Vriska explained, "but at the same time, I've learned how to cope with the fact that I can't see like you can. Just because one of my eyes is fake doesn't mean I can't learn how to game like the best. I'm the kind of girl who goes to game tournaments and kicks all the asses. All of them." She smiled and laughed, and he couldn't help but chuckle along with her. Her happiness was incredibly contagious, something that he was glad to share with her, even if he couldn't taste the sweet flavor of victory that she had gotten to revel in.

They watched a few more movies, but when they were done, at a time that John figured they'd go out to get something to eat, she seemed anxious to get away from something. "Is everything okay?" he asked her, watching her tapping one of her feet rapidly. "Do you need me to do anything for you?"

She shook her head, but jumped up and started rushing to pack her things up. "No, I'm good, just remember that I have somewhere I need to be. Don't mind me, this has been a really great day and all, but I've got to go." Without any other words, and without checking to make sure she had grabbed everything, she bolted out of the room, and as John followed her, he saw that she made a beeline for the front door and left the house, not so much as a goodbye or a thanks for the movie marathon being said to him.

He went back to his bedroom in a slump. Of course, the first time he spends a day with a girl, everything goes wrong and she leaves running. "I just don't get it, everything seemed fine with her! What happened with that last movie that was so bad?" He gave a glance to the empty DVD case on his dresser, and shook his head. "That's a classic. One of the greatest movies ever made. Does she not like Nic Cage as much as she said she did?" There were questions that needed answering, and standing in his bedroom asking himself them was not the way to go about it. However, he couldn't follow Vriska out and ask her, because she had been determined to leave.

When he saw that she had left a couple of her games behind, he had an idea. He had to meet up with her again to give those back, didn't he? Maybe then he would be able to find out the answer to the most pressing of all his questions: not if she was mad at him or something, but if she didn't like the man of their movies.

* * *

Finding somewhere to hang out with Vriska again was a lot harder than he thought it would be. He made offers for her to come back over to his place and she would turn them down, always saying that she wasn't available that particular day or time. When he'd ask her to come up with some time for them to see each other, she'd say she couldn't think of one at that moment, and to give her a while before she could figure things out.

This made John worry that it was him that was the problem at their last meeting, not the movies they watched, but there wasn't much he could do about it. He brought up that he had some of her games still and she didn't change her stance on being available, an odd reaction to finding out someone had something of theirs. And so, for weeks upon weeks, there was no progress on the front of them getting to know each other, and in those weeks, many things that didn't involve Vriska happened in John's life. The most important thing, no doubt, was Jade leaving to go back to college once more, her classes starting a week before his did. With her going back to school, it left him alone to focus solely on getting to see the girl of his dreams again, rather than having to worry about interacting with his sister.

Yes, there had been holidays and the changing of the years in the meantime, but what had been the most prominent event during that time period was Jade leaving, as nothing else really resonated with John as meaning anything anymore. But something strange happened, on his way back from dropping his sister off at the airport for yet another semester away. Something that he hadn't really expected in the slightest.

It was Vriska messaging him, the notification lighting his phone up so that he could see it was her. As he was driving there wasn't much he could legally do about it, but talking to that girl transcended the law, so he grabbed his phone and checked the message. All she was asking was for his class schedule, so she'd know if they'd be taking any classes together. Doing the best he could to send a legible message to her while still paying attention to the road, John typed out the most basic names for his classes and sent them. The response to his schedule came in moments, with an excited smiley face and the message reading that they had one of those elective literature classes together, and that they should meet up at the college bookstore to get their textbooks.

John had to read the message a few times to even comprehend what he was seeing. Was this really the girl who had been so hard to meet up with just springing a meeting on him unexpectedly? He couldn't do that, anyway, not without her games in tow, something he made sure to explain in his return message. She replied right away, saying that she understood, and that it was cool if he took a while to get there. "The line's like an hour long at this point, anyway," she had sent, "so if you can promise me you'll come with my games, I'll grab all the books you need."

He looked at the clock, then shrugged and told her it was a fair trade. Besides, he needed to get his school books anyway, and if Vriska was willing to do it for him, it would be a lot easier—even if he was going to have to wait in line and pay for his books when it came time to do that. Just getting to even see her was a bonus, so he wasn't going to complain. Once he had gotten home and grabbed the games, then was on his way to the school, it hit him that he hadn't ever told her where he went to school, nor had he had any idea that she went there as well, but he figured that she had seen that on Facebook or asked Jade about it to verify. For possibly being interested in him, she sure did a lot of stuff without ever talking to him about it.

When he got to the school's bookstore, he saw the reason why. Vriska was standing about fifteen people back in the line, with that tall, dark-haired Meenah at her side. He walked up to them, instantly nervous about having to talk to Vriska with her not-girlfriend at her side, and before he could even say a word, Meenah was pushing a stack of books into his arms. "Here, take these, my arms are krillin' me for holdin' them so long."

He groaned as he was now holding what felt like fifty pounds of textbooks. "Thanks. And, uh, thanks for grabbing these for me?" His voice made it painfully obvious that he hadn't been expecting Meenah to be there, and he had no clue whatsoever about how he was supposed to act around her. "I mean, thank you."

"Shore thing, kid. If Vriska says I gotta be nice to a little minnow like you, I'm not gonna refuse 'til you give me reason to." Meenah was sizing him up, looking John all over as he was shaking holding those books. "Don't think you're gonna last with holdin' those books. Can't wait to watch you flounder."

"Shut up, Meenah." Vriska, holding her own stack of books that didn't look nearly as big as John's, didn't so much as glance over at the scene beside her when she spoke. "Leave him alone and help him out if he needs it. Don't be a jerk to my friend just because you can."

"Come on, you know he's just usin' you for your looks. Reel friends, like me, we hang tough through the roughest of waters, but this kid? He'll head for shore the moment things get bad. Just you watch." To make matters worse, Meenah pushed John a little bit, nearly sending him toppling over with the weight of the books he was holding, and she laughed at the sight.

Vriska was not pleased with what she was hearing. "He knows my eye isn't real and he's still wanting to hang out with me, so I doubt things getting 'bad' will cause him to realize I'm a lot to handle. Besides, I bet I could tell him one of my biggest secrets right now, and he'd take it like a man."

"He ain't a man, he's a kid." Pushing John again, Meenah grew bored of watching him struggle to keep his balance and turned her sole attention to Vriska. "Betcha he's only here 'cause you're hot."

"I bet he's here because he's my friend, and he has some of my games. Not every guy out there wants a girl because she can ride his dick, you know." The sound of those words had John blushing, because he hadn't ever thought about doing anything sexual with Vriska, and hearing her mention it was something he hadn't expected. "Me and him, we have a different sort of bond. One over games and having gone to school together."

"A-and Nic Cage movies, right?" John meekly said, his voice barely above a whisper. It may not have been the best place to bring that up, but it was one that worked and he took the opportunity. The look of absolute shock that Meenah gave him, and the one of surprise that Vriska was giving, told him that maybe he should have just keep quiet.

"Did homeboy here just mention that ugly-ass actor who can't act for shit?" Meenah asked, turning her shocked glare to Vriska. "Gill, you got some 'splainin' to do."

For a second, it seemed that Vriska was going to ignore what was being demanded of her, but her expression soured and she said something that made John feel like a total idiot: "You know as well as I do that I hate the guy. John must have been looking at old joke posts of mine online or something. Who could ever like a guy like Nic Cage?" But as Meenah turned to glare at John again, he noticed that Vriska was winking at him, signaling that she was lying to get Meenah off her back.

However, Meenah wasn't aware that she wasn't supposed to jump onto John's back for saying something that was made to seem out of place. "Don't you ever make me question my best friend and her taste in actors, got it? Already questionin' her taste in men with you walkin' up in here, but don't make me question more." John nodded like he was actually threatened by this pseudo-gang girl talking to him like that, and the situation seemed settled.

They were about four people from the front of the line when someone spoke again, this time being Vriska. "So, John, where are my games?" she asked, looking at him with a warm smile. "You don't seem to have brought them in with you."

"Yeah, figured the bookstore wouldn't appreciate that, so I left them out in my car. I was thinking, after we were done here, you could come to my car and get them before you left." His story wasn't the complete truth, as he had just forgotten to grab them before coming inside, but he was playing it off the best he could. She appreciated it and her smile grew, although Meenah was rolling her eyes and scoffing at the gesture. "What, do you have a problem with me wanting to not look like a thief?"

"You just wanna get her in your car to bang'er, don't you?" Meenah's voice was rude and harsh, accusing John of something he would never think to do, but thankfully that was all of her meanness he was subjected to at that moment, as her phone began blasting some loud, obnoxious pop punk music. "Oh, hey, Cronus is callin'. Don't really think I'm feelin' his four inches tonight, but I betta take this." With that, she was pushing her way out of the bookstore, not to be seen again for the duration of the trip.

"Wait, did she just refer to someone as—"

"Yeah, she does that. Has all these guys lined up in her phone by dick size. It's funny, she thinks I've got you around for some casual sex, when she's the one who isn't satisfied unless she's getting banged by a size of her choice each night." Vriska gave as much of a shrug as she could with the books she was holding. "Or, uh, by someone, really. As long as it goes inside her, she doesn't actually care if it's a dude or a chick with a strap-on."

John froze as he processed the last line. "Are you saying you and her have…?"

"A time or two, yeah. It's not a common thing, and it's really awkward for me because she has called me my sister's name before while we're intimate, and I just can't do that, you know?" He looked at her and noticed that she wasn't smiling as big anymore. "I know she's my friend, but she and my sister used to be an actual thing, and it's hard to be a replacement for something like that."

"I don't really understand where you're coming from, so I'm just going to think that it's a bad thing and agree with you." John gave Vriska a smile, hoping that it would cheer her back up. "As long as you and Meenah aren't actually together, I don't really care if you and her screw around. If you were together, I'd feel kind of weird, though."

"Why would you feel weird, John?" Vriska tilted her head slightly as she looked at him.

"Because I sort of like you, and I don't want to be liking someone who's in a relationship with someone else." It felt like a weight was lifted as he admitted to that, and he was shocked when she didn't seem too put off by what he had just said. "Uh, aren't you going to scold me for liking you? Isn't that what girls do?"

Again, she tried to shrug. "It doesn't really matter to me that you like me or not. I don't know how I feel about you, and right now, I just want to get to know you better. Maybe hang out more, play more games, that sort of thing. I don't think we're ready for a relationship quite yet."

"Oh, yeah, I understand." Inside, he did, and it wasn't just him trying to agree with her. He knew that they barely knew each other, and if they got together, what would their relationship be based on? There needed to be more time and more connections made before anything happened, and he was completely aware of that. "So I guess it means more hanging out before anything happens, right?"

She nodded. "Right. And if that means watching more of your Nic Cage movies, so be it. I know I said I didn't like him, but that's because Meenah was around. I do love the guy, love his work, and especially love his face." At that, they both laughed, and the friendly conversation continued until after they had paid for their books and were walking to John's car to get the games, only for Vriska to realize that Meenah had completely left and she was now without a ride.

Being the gentleman he was, he drove her home. And he didn't even expect anything for the act, so when she hugged him before she got out of the car, he was pleasantly surprised—and a bit in love with the way she gave hugs.

* * *

**A/N: Just wanted to thank everyone who is reading this for their support. Y'all mean the world to me! Two chapters to go!**


	4. I Couldn't Help It

The semester wasn't as easy as John would have liked it to have been, the most challenging class he was taking being the literature class that Vriska just so happened to also be in. Now he wasn't anywhere close to failing the class, but he wasn't exactly getting the best grades on his assignments, and he certainly wasn't understanding the reading that was assigned. Most of the blame for this sudden onset of not being able to process short stories had to have come from the fact that he was sitting next to easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, but was he going to pack up and move elsewhere for the sake of his grade? Of course he wasn't. Getting to be next to her was a dream, and he wasn't going to stop it.

By the time Spring Break rolled around, he was getting closer to failing than he would like to admit to anyone, and she was beginning to notice that he wasn't doing so well in the class. With their big paper due the day classes resumed, she figured that the least she could do for the guy was help him out with that, as much as John denied that he ever needed the help. "Come on, you're so going to fail if you don't come over and spend some good time hitting the books with me," she said to him, watching him become flustered at the idea of spending time with her. "Hey, don't be like that. We've hung out before."

"Yeah, but not like this. This is like tutoring or something. I don't need it." Defiant and stubborn as always, John really did not want to admit to needing help. Truth was, he had no idea where to even begin with his major analysis paper that he had to do, and since Vriska had already turned her in and gotten a grade on it (a perfect grade, at that), taking up her offer for help would have been in his best interests. But he was a stubborn guy, and guys like him didn't go for help so easily. "I can manage on my own."

"You won't be saying that when you fail the paper and the class. Now just trust in me, come over a few times over break, and we'll get you the best grade ever." The way Vriska smiled at him as she said that, while not enough to convince him into believing her right away, was more than enough to get him even more flustered.

"I-I don't know if I want that," he sputtered, trying to keep up his defiant ways, but there was just something to how confident Vriska was in her abilities to help him out that was hard to resist. "Maybe I will come over once, or twice, I don't know…"

She grinned. "That's the spirit! Just shoot me a message when you want to do this, and I will make sure to have the place to myself. Since my sister isn't coming home for break, it'll be a lot easier than it would normally." And with that, she packed up her bag, said bye to the teacher, and left John sitting in his seat in a mostly-empty classroom, wishing he hadn't just agreed to doing what he was now going to have to do.

He picked the first day of the week off to do this thing, texting Vriska that he was planning on coming over that particular day (they had exchanged numbers not long after the bookstore incident, so that they could communicate easier), and she replied quickly that he was more than welcome to it. She had to give him her address and he had to make sure his dad carpooled to work that day, but everything came together and he found himself parked in front of a rather trashy-looking apartment building the day he had chosen for this to happen. It didn't ever occur to him that such a beautiful person could live in such a terrible looking place, but she was a college student. She probably didn't have a lot of money.

Going inside the building was even scarier than sitting outside of it, because it smelled faintly of blood and he honestly thought that someone had died inside there recently. But once he was in the apartment that Vriska lived in, things were better. Everything was brightly decorated, and it was a lot more cheerful than what was just outside the front door. "Sorry that you had to see what's out in the lobby," Vriska apologized, once they were settled in to do some studying. "Some guy came in after being shot yesterday, and it was a huge mess."

"I figured that was the case," he replied, before opening his textbook to try and get his mind off of a potential dead person in the lobby. "Now, should we get to making me understand what this story means so I can write about it?"

"Of course, you decide to come over for my help, and when you get here, you're so set on working that you want to get started right away." With a laugh, Vriska opened her own book to the same page John's was on, snuggled up close next to him, and began explaining what she felt was important for John to know about the story he had chosen for his analysis paper. Her words didn't always make sense to him, but they sure made a hell of a lot more sense than what the teacher had been lecturing, and after an hour or so of explanations, he was beginning to understand that he wasn't nearly as screwed about this assignment as he may have thought.

They would have gone on longer into the beginnings of the assignment if Vriska hadn't looked away from her textbook for a moment, her eye catching a glimpse of something laying out on the table. "Oh yeah," she said, setting her book aside to reach forward and grab the smaller book she had seen, "guess what I was doing yesterday?" She held up the book, and John recognized it as his (or, rather, their) senior yearbook. "I can't believe you didn't know we went to school together. Was I really that unmemorable?"

"No, I just didn't really care to know or remember anyone from our class." John shrugged, putting his own book aside so that Vriska could open the yearbook and lay it between them, opening straight to the page with her senior biography on it, complete with her picture from that school year—and she looked completely different than the beauty sitting beside him. While the Vriska he was with had long, honey brown hair that hung down her back, sometimes freely, sometimes in braids, the version of her that was pictured had shorter hair that was darker and pulled up into a ponytail. Her bangs in the pictures all covered her left eye, the one that John knew as the fake one, and it made sense that he had never once thought to suspect her eye was fake, because if he did remember seeing her before, it would have been covered and not noticeable at all.

"God, I looked like a dweeb," Vriska said, shaking her head at her pictures. "How I had two different boyfriends with that gross face is beyond me."

John looked at her, eyebrows raised over the rim of his glasses. "_Two_ boyfriends? At once?"

"No, oh no, I'm not the one in this house who likes stringing multiple guys along at once!" Rather than getting offended by the misunderstanding, Vriska laughed it off, turning the page from her pictures to those of a different guy that they had graduated with, one that John groaned at the sight of when he saw him. "You remember him?" she asked, to which he gave even more of a groan. "Can you believe he's the first guy I ever kissed?" When John shook his head, she laughed more. "Yeah, it's true. Sophomore year, I had the biggest crush on him and he had one on me. We dated for a few months. Then he made one insensitive joke about my eye and, well, I sort of pushed him off the top of the playground out behind the building."

Looking at the pictures of the guy in the yearbook, John only took a second to get where Vriska was going with that. "So you're telling me that not only did you date the biggest dork in our graduating class, but you're the one who paralyzed him?"

"It wasn't intentional. Tavros and I still have a decent relationship now, anyway. He's terrified of me but would still kiss me again if he got the chance, I bet." Vriska shrugged at her thoughts. "He doesn't live too far from here, anyway. I see him out and about sometimes. He laughs at my eye, I laugh at his crippled legs. All in good fun."

Thinking to himself that it didn't sound like much fun at all, John made an attempt to divert the conversation to somewhere that wasn't about a guy with a physical handicap. "So if that was your first boyfriend, who was your second?"  
"Let me show you." Turning through the pages, only stopping for a moment to show John his very own senior page, put next to Jade's even though they had different last names, Vriska had to go to pictures of students that weren't set up specially to show her other ex-boyfriend. This one was just a small picture in a row of them, a hipster glasses-wearing sort of guy who was scowling at the camera when it snapped the photo. "Him," she said, pointing at the picture and rolling her eye, "that's the other one. Eridan."

"Didn't he get in trouble for writing love poems in permanent marker on some chick's locker?" John asked, examining the picture a bit closer. "Or was that some other guy who looked like he was going to kill himself at any moment?"

"Nope, that was definitely him. What a trashy and gross guy. At least he isn't as disgusting as his brother, but being scum of the earth must run in their family." Vriska flicked the picture and laughed. "Can't believe I actually ever thought he was cute. Then again, he thought I was a goddess when I looked like a horrible and stupid dork, so I guess we're even on that front. Even though I am now a goddess and he's just a gross asshole."

"Who ya talkin' about out there?" It was an interrupting voice, one that came from one of the bedrooms in the apartment, and when she heard it, Vriska jumped to her feet, sending the yearbook flying. "Lemme guess, it's probably one of my guys. And, lemme also guess, it's gotta be one of the low tide dudes, not the high tide ones."

"What does she mean by 'low tide' and 'high tide'?" John quietly asked, trying to make sense of what was happening, but Vriska was too busy being shocked at the fact that Meenah was even around to reply to him.

In fact, she was almost too shocked to be able to reply to her roommate. "The only guy of yours I was talking about was Cronus, and you and I both know that he's disgusting. What are you doing here?"

"I sorta live here. I know, crazy fact." Coming into the room, Meenah gave John a dirty look when she saw him. "And he doesn't live here. What's the shrimp doin' in my apartment?"

"We were studying, and then got distracted with looking through our yearbook, which is what you heard us talking about. Now answer me, since you said you had plans today: what are you doing here?" Vriska had put her hands on her hips, trying to make herself seem more intimidating to Meenah, but the dark-haired woman was still glaring at John. "Pay attention to me and answer me!"

Meenah looked away from John, stepping closer to Vriska as she did. "'kay, I'll pay attention to you. I'm not sure what you expected from me, since my plans normally involve bein' someone's bed friend for the night. It ain't night, it ain't time for me to decide what length I'm feelin' and go for it." She gave a large and clearly fake smile at Vriska, who sighed. "What, that's the truth. You got somefin to say about it?"

"Sure do. You told me that you and…one of those guys were going to go out of town for the day. Obviously that changed and you didn't bother telling me."

"Because I didn't know until it was time to go and there wasn't anyone here pickin' me up. Turns out that I got invited on a date I wasn't supposed to know about. That's what happens when the guy you bang has a girlfriend that ya sometimes bang too." The smile fell and Meenah kicked at the floor a bit. "Probably for the best that I didn't go, real talk. Ain't exactly feelin' like bangin' the day away."

Watching the soap opera that was unfolding before him was a blast, and John was enjoying it immensely (and by that, it was meant that he felt awkward and a bit disgusted at what he was hearing), but he figured that stepping away to let the ladies continue their conversation on their own was for the best. Rather than interrupting them, as Vriska was coming up with some sort of rebuttal he was completely ignoring, he just stood up and walked to the bathroom in the apartment. In there, he'd at least be able to lock the door and be alone for a bit, trying to forget what he had just heard about Meenah's sex life.

That was going to be nearly impossible, though, when he realized that this bathroom he was currently hiding in was filled with sexual items. There was a shelf dedicated solely to differently-shaped dildos, with another shelf of lubricants and other tools beneath it. To try and not focus on that, he turned to the sink counter, hoping that it would be a safe place. For the most part it was, with the typical toothbrushes and hair supplies on it, but then he saw something that was nearly as bad as the pleasure shelf. Combined with what he had heard out in the other room, this thing sitting there was most definitely not something he had wanted to see or even think about.

He covered his face, wishing that he wasn't at this place, with these people. Sure, Vriska was cute and nice, but she seemed to have a lot about her that John wasn't entirely okay with, Meenah being the biggest problem. And said problem was present and making things horrible for him and her both, and all they had been trying to do was get him to pass a class. "Yo, get the fuck outta there," he heard Meenah saying from the other side of the door, and he was slightly thankful she wasn't banging on the door. "I need to get in there and show miss 'never been fucked by a guy' out there that there ain't any harm to some screwin' without a porpoise." It took a second for John to realize she was being punny with the word "purpose", but by then he had already opened the door to let her in and himself out.

As he walked back to the couch, his face mostly covered, he saw Vriska sitting back down, muttering something under her breath. "I can't believe that she…" Her voice trailed off as John came into the picture. "Oh, you're back. Great."

"You don't sound too happy to have me here," he replied, his voice showing that he was offended by the tone she had just taken with him. "I could go, if that's what you want."

"No, it's not you that I want gone right now. It's her." Vriska shook her head, sighing as she did. "She's convinced that I didn't want her here today because I wanted to fuck you, which isn't the case at all. Now she's going to prove to me that casual flings are completely safe, which I'm sure they are, but I don't think I could fuck someone without a real emotional attachment, which we don't really have yet."

"Even if we did, I wouldn't want to have sex with you," John said, hoping that his words would mean something to Vriska. "I was always taught you save that for marriage, or for when you really love someone. And we aren't even together. We're just friends. I couldn't do anything with you and not feel really bad about it."

"I'm glad you see things that way, and don't feel entitled to my body just because we're friends. I wish Meenah was able to understand that, though." Again, Vriska sighed. "But okay, enough about us."

John nodded, as talking about their hypothetical relationship bothered him a bit. "What was so important that she needed in there?"

"Right, never said that, did I?" He shook his head and she took a deep breath, preparing herself for the coming explanation. "So her reason for why I should be okay with fucking you even though we aren't together is completely stupid, but it's because she thinks that if I got laid by something real and not rubber, then I'd chill out a bit. Then I pointed out that she has no right to talk about that, because she bangs different guys each night based on how many inches of flesh she wants rammed into her, and then she mentioned that at least it's not rubber. So of course I asked her if she makes her guys, uh, wrap it before they tap it, and she said she doesn't because it ruins the experience."

John was silent a moment, just thinking about what he had been told, before he replied with, "Oh, that would definitely explain why there was a pregnancy test on the counter."

"Wait, what?" Vriska's voice was full of surprise, and she jumped to her feet again, this time to pace around the room. "Oh fuck no, she knew about this. She fucking knew. This was her way of telling me, wasn't it?" As she continued going on and on about how screwed they were, about how there was no way that they'd ever know who the baby daddy was, and about how they were never going to be able to keep a child alive in the apartment they were currently in.

It was somewhere in the middle of the last rant when Meenah came back out, proudly holding out the little piss stick that John had seen on the counter. "Y'know, I think you're worryin' about nofin at all. I bang and get banged almost every night and look, clean and not up the spout even a l'il bit." The announcement stopped Vriska where she stood, before she ran to Meenah's side to investigate for herself. "Look and be proud. I know how to be fun and safe without, whale, bein' safe."

"I fucking hate you right now," Vriska told her, pushing the stick to the ground. "Don't do this sort of thing to me again, especially when I have a guest over."

"Then maybe next time, you should invite a guest over that you'll get wet 'n wild with!" Laughing as she spoke, Meenah retreated back to her room, without so much as an apology to John for mentally scarring him for life.

When Vriska sat back down, she looked at him and tried to smile as best as she could, although her emotions were still all over the place from what just happened. "I guess we should get back to our work now, huh?" she asked, reaching for her literature textbook once more. "Or do you have a different idea for what we should do?"

"I think I want to go home." John spoke before thinking, and the hurt look on Vriska's face from what he said made him instantly regret ever opening his mouth then. "I mean, I don't want to be here if Meenah might come back out and make things weird again. She's a lot more than I want to ever handle."

"I hear you on that one. Once my sister's done with school, this summer, I am so moving back home or anywhere that isn't in this place. I can't take Meenah's shit anymore." There was a bit of a smile on Vriska's lips as she spoke, but it was replaced with a small frown that made John feel bad for her and her situation. "But it's whatever. We've got work to do to get you passing that class, and if it means we have to do the work at your place instead of mine, I'm down for that. At least your dad seems cool."

"And he wouldn't interrupt us with sex talks." That's what John thought, anyway, but when they met up at his house the next day, his dad made sure to tell them the story of the birds and the bees before he left for work.

* * *

The next major event of John's life was his twenty-first birthday, the one day of his life that he really wished he could remember. It had started as such a great and promising day, a party that people of all ages and situations could enjoy, but it devolved into a day that would forever be lost to the cause of being completely wasted for the first time in his life. But everything that he learned of that happened on that fateful day had found its beginnings in the months leading up to April thirteenth, and so when he heard of what happened, he wasn't too terribly surprised.

Starting with what he did remember, he had woken up to the smell of freshly-cooked pancakes, courtesy of his sister, who had taken a long weekend to get to celebrate with her brother. "I didn't come home for break just so I could do this," Jade explained as she plated up a few pancakes for him. "Figured you'd want someone around who'll remember what crazy stuff you do tonight."

"What do you mean by that? Aren't you going to get drunk like the rest of us?" John, eyeing the plate like a ravenous wolf, waited for his sister to set it down in front of him before he dug into it. "You can drink, so why don't you?"

She shrugged, putting pancakes onto a plate for herself. "I don't want to do it, really. It's scary waking up and not remembering what you did the night before, and the last thing I want is for both of us to not know what we were doing while we were celebrating you."

"You make it sound like we'd do something bad." After John spoke, he remembered the scene that had taken place in the very kitchen they were in, back at Jade's birthday celebration, and regretted saying his words. Something bad very well could happen if they both got drunk, if he was as careless with how much alcohol he consumed as she was. "I mean, you make it sound like everyone would let something bad happen."

"Trust me, I'm not drinking tonight, no matter what. Someone's got to be sober enough to drive everyone home, and you know that no one else will make this noble sacrifice. Especially not someone coming out here specifically to get you plastered." When asked about what she meant by that, Jade was quick to remind her brother of something that had been planned for a long time coming: "Jane's going to be here in a few hours. You know, to celebrate both of your birthdays in the most drunken of ways?"

"I remember that. I just, well, don't think we'll be doing much of what she would like to do." He was mostly done shoveling pancake into his mouth now, watching his sister eat her own food for a moment before continuing on with his thought. "Vriska's not old enough to drink, and I invited her out with me, so we could hang out more. Is that bad?"

Jade didn't even bother to sugarcoat things. "That's the worst idea you have ever had. So not only is our cousin going to be subjected to something that minors can do, she's going to be deprived of her binge drinking experience with her baby cousin that she's wanted since she turned twenty-one. And, on top of that, you've invited the girl you're madly in love with out for a night of watching you become a stumbling fool. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if she never wanted to speak to you again after what's going to happen."

"Aw, come on, you act like I'm going to be a pushy and rude drunk or something. Or that I'm going to get sick over everything like you did." At that, Jade shot her brother a dirty look and he laughed. "Okay, maybe it makes sense as to why you're going to be the sober one. Just, uh, make sure that I don't fuck things up too badly with Vriska tonight, please. I really like her, and I think she likes me, and the last thing I need is my drunk ass scaring her off."

"I've got your back, little brother, don't you worry." Dropping her glare, she began to smile at him, a reassuring look for him to be getting. "If anything happens to go wrong, you bet I'll be there to stop it in its tracks."

As confident in herself as Jade sounded, John should have known that there would be a lot of things that could possibly go wrong before he even got to the bowling alley where he'd be celebrating the night away. The first thing to go slightly sour happened mere moments after his cousin and her girlfriend came into the house, Jane grumbling about something or other about the flight out to see him (he didn't catch all of it, but what he understood was that she had been stuck in an aisle seat, with Roxy across the aisle, and a bulking guy twice her size next to her). When she saw John she gave him a small smile and they exchanged happy birthday greetings, which was quickly followed with a question he was dreading: "So, where are we going to go first? A club? A bar? I'm down for whatever, as long as it's fun."

"About that," he said, looking to the ground. "I've sort of invited someone along, and she's not old enough to drink yet. We can go bar crawling tomorrow night or something, but tonight we're going bowling so that my friend can come."

"But we've been waiting for this moment for—wait, did you say _she's_ not old enough? As in, this person isn't just a friend but a girlfriend?" There was no denying that there was anger in Jane's voice, but something about the idea of John having a significant other made her seem a lot happier. "Why didn't you tell me that sooner?"

"She's not my girlfriend. Not yet, maybe not ever. But she's coming with us because she's a cool girl and I'd like her to be around." He was blushing, hoping that this would be the end of all possible problems for the day. How wrong he was, and how wishful of thinking he had been taking part in.

He had completely spaced on the fact that, although she may not have been old enough to drink and would therefore remain sober all night, Vriska was unable to drive herself places due to her only having half of a range of vision. So when they had gotten to the bowling alley and he saw Meenah walking around, he was upset and didn't really know how to handle things. There was no way he wanted that weird woman at his birthday celebration, even if she was there only because the girl he did want present needed someone to drive her home after everything was said and done.

"Sorry that she's here," Vriska told him, when she got to get a word in to the birthday boy. "I told her that Jade could drive, because she actually remembered that I can't and did offer to get me and everything, but you know how Meenah is. She likes the chance to get a good lay, and at someone's birthday party? That's the best time to go for that chance."

"You don't think she'll try and go after me, do you?" John asked, his voice a bit small as he did, but he regained confidence when Vriska shook her head. "Okay, good. I don't need that tonight. Don't need my first sexual encounter to be when I'm drunk."

"I wouldn't let that happen, and if I somehow did, I bet your sister would kill Meenah for it." Looking around to see who else was present, Vriska tapped her finger on her chin a few times before pointing at someone John couldn't see. "I'm just going to make a guess here, but if Meenah decides she wants to get in bed with anyone here, it's going to be that person."

When John turned to see where Vriska was pointing, he couldn't help but laugh. She was pointing at one tall, thin blonde he knew as his cousin's girlfriend Roxy. "Dude, if that happens, then she'd be getting the wrath of my cousin. That's her girlfriend."

"Lovely. Meenah enjoys threesomes." Vriska laughed, dropping her hand to her side before anyone noticed that she had been pointing anywhere. "Let's just hope she gets bored and leaves me here without deciding to bang anyone."

"I think I like that plan best. Let's call that one 'plan A', and let's let 'plan B' be if she decides to sandwich herself between Roxy there and Jane. Depending on how drunk they get, it could happen." John shrugged, not really sure if that's how drunk people's thought processes worked, but he was teetering ever closer to finding out.

Within the hour, he had already had three drinks purchased for him and had downed them all, taking well to the taste and smell of alcohol once he was drinking it. Whatever was to happen after that would be a fuzzy memory at best.

* * *

**A/N: This is my favorite chapter of this story. I mean, the next one is great too, but there's something with that scene in the apartment that just gets me. :D Anyway, hope you enjoyed this week's installment, and that you'll stick around for the end. Which posts next Monday, 3/2, which happens to be the birthday of the person I wrote this for! **


	5. It's All Your Fault

"I think we need to call a toast to the guy of the night!" Her glass high in the air, Jane looked from her seat at the bar down a few chairs, where John was sitting, those three drinks empty in front of him. "Everyone, raise your glasses and cheer for this great boy who ain't a boy anymore if you ask me!" The members of their party who were at the bar all cheered and clanged their glasses together, as someone ordered John another drink so that he could participate with a full glass.

He wasn't going to turn down something free, especially not something new to him. When the bartender slid it in front of him, he was a bit surprised to see that it was a huge glass, one bigger than the other three put together. "Uh, what is this?" he asked, his voice still relatively normal. The bartender replied that it was just a house beer, a drink that someone had picked it for him because it was an overall safe bet, and incredibly cheap if he did like it and wanted more. "Okay, sounds good to me. Bottoms up, I guess!"

Taking one sip, John had never regretted anything more than drinking that cheap beer, and it took all his restraint to keep from spitting it out. He swallowed it down, gasping for air once it was out of his mouth, and dropped the glass, sending shards and liquid flying everywhere. The reaction to that differed whether the person was behind the bar or not: the bartender shrugged and began cleaning up the mess, while everyone sitting up at the bar looked to him in shock. "John, you're not supposed to do that when we're toasting you," Jane said, shaking her head at the way he had ruined the toast for him. "Now what are we gonna do with you?"

"I don't know, but it better not involve beer. That stuff tastes like piss." He was being blunt and honest, something that earned him a cheer from his companions up at the bar, which aside from him, Jane, and Roxy consisted of his dad and a few of his dad's friends. A cheer also came from behind him, where Jade was standing and watching over him. "Can someone get me something actually good this time?"

Roxy, waving her glass around in the air, piped up. "I can do it! Martinis are great, you'll love one I bet! It tastes so much better than whatever you just had."

"Glad to hear it." John leaned over the bartop a bit, looking down to see Roxy and shoot her a thumbs-up in approval. "I can't wait to see why you like them so much." She laughed and he grinned, this whole "drinking" thing going over fairly well overall.

"Hey, don't get too drunk yet," Jade said, approaching her brother. He leaned back and turned to look at her, a confused look replacing that grin he had just been sporting. "I'm pretty sure if you become incoherent now, Vriska's going to regret ever agreeing to come out tonight." Saying the name of his very special guest made John put his hands to his cheeks and gasp, scrambling to get out of his chair. "That lit a fire under your ass, didn't it?"

He held a finger up, telling his sister to hold on a second. "Roxy, I'm going to have to take a raincheck on that drink for right now," he said, before dropping the finger and returning to his conversation with Jade. "I promised her I wouldn't spend all night in here getting drunk, and what have I done? Spent all night in here getting drunk."

"Go bowl a round or two with her then. I'll even come with you, since the smell in here is giving me a bit of a headache." Jade put her hand on her brother's shoulder and they left the bar, going out to the lane they had reserved for the night. Vriska sat at the closest table to it, idly playing around on her phone, and when she noticed that she now had company, she turned whatever game she was playing off and looked up at her joiners.

"It's about time someone comes out here to remember I exist," she said, standing as she did. "Are we going to play or what, birthday boy? Pretty sure you told me you'd beat me in this, and based on the last time you gloated about beating me, I kicked your ass into the next week." She motioned to the screen above the lane, which only had her name entered, waiting for the second player's name to be put in. "Let's do this, shall we?"

John's eyes lit up and he rushed to the screen, typing his name in, with Jade's name as third player. "Yeah, I think it's about time we get this over with and see you lose." He pressed the enter key forcefully and the game was ready to begin, but as Vriska was the only one to have her shoes and a ball for playing, it was another five minutes before the game progressed any further than her turn.

But when it did, it quickly became a landslide victory in her favor. John couldn't quite throw the ball straight enough, so while Vriska was consistently knocking all the pins down every time she went (eight and two every time), he was maybe getting three down. As for Jade, she may have been the oldest person playing in the group, but she was also the only one who had never played without the bumpers to guide her ball, and she finished the game with just a handful of points. Naturally, when Vriska won by a large amount, John called for a rematch, and they started over, him confident that he would be able to win in his second try and Vriska just as sure she'd win again, while Jade just hoped she'd actually do decently.

It ended with the same result as the first, much to the displeasure of the siblings and the enjoyment of Vriska. "So looks like a half-blind girl can beat you in video games and bowling, huh?" she teasingly asked, poking John in the chest as she did, him giving her no response for the physical contact. "You're a funny one, Egbert. I'm glad we're friends."

"Same. I think I like getting beat by a girl." John tilted his head back and laughed, a hearty laugh that got everyone around smiling at how cheerful he seemed. But once he went back to his original, non-laughing stance, he had noticeably gotten less happy. "I'm going to go drink off this sorrow now. Roxy's buying me my next drink." Before Jade could stop him, or before Vriska could try and talk him into another game, he was headed back over to the bar.

"Aw, you played a game without me? What sort 'a frond does that?" Appearing out of what seemed like thin air, Meenah was there, draping her arm over Vriska's shoulder. "Tell me we're gonna play now. I wanna see how good you've gotten."

"But playing me versus you never ends well," Vriska said, pushing Meenah off of her, just to look to Jade with a question in mind. "Say, Jade, would you mind playing another game, so that me and Meenah aren't going at it alone? I know you want to watch your brother or whatever, but I think he should be fine for just one game."

Jade shrugged, looking to her abysmal score up on the screen. "I don't see why you'd need me since I'm not very good, but okay I guess! I trust that someone will keep John from getting hurt while I'm not around."

"That's the spirit!" Moments later, after Meenah's name had been added to the game in place of John's, they were bowling once more, things a lot more heated because there were now two people who had some sort of talent at the game playing. Midway through the game, while it was Meenah's turn, Vriska sat next to Jade and tried to strike up some friendly conversation. "Listen, I've got to thank you so much for some of the stuff you've done for me. You could have known that I may have started crushing on your brother and done whatever it took to keep him away from me—"

"Which I did, by the way," Jade interrupted, laughing as she did.

"—yeah, well, it didn't work. What, you play the 'lesbian' card at him?" When Jade nodded, it became Vriska's turn to laugh, finding that fact hilarious. "That's the sort of sister I knew you were. Remember back in school when we'd be lab partners because no one wanted to work with the ugly girls, and all we'd do was talk about how weird John was?"

After a brief interruption that consisted of them having to take their turns so that they could talk while Meenah took her sweet time going, it was back to the conversation. "I do remember that. You said that he was cute, but not your type. What changed?"

"Maybe the fact that I've grown up? I used to like guys who had problems. Ones who were needy and would appreciate me for being able to do things. But John…" Vriska sighed, propping her head up on her hand as she did. "He's still the slacker guy he was back then, and while it wasn't attractive to me in high school, it is now. Sort of."

"Sort of? Explain what you mean by that."

"Uh, you know." Giving a shrug with one shoulder, Vriska wasn't quite sure how to translate her thoughts to words. But after another intermission, she was going to give it her best shot. "He's a great guy. You've got an amazing brother, and I'm happy that he exists, but I don't know if I want to date him. Be platonic life mates? Sure! But I don't know if I'm up for a romantic relationship with a guy who doesn't have any drive in life."

"You want a guy who can take you places, don't you?" Jade looked at Vriska, and wasn't surprised in the slightest when she saw the other woman nod. "I don't blame you for not having faith in my brother for being able to do that. He has no idea what he wants to do with his life, and until he does, maybe you should keep it as just friends between you. I say this as a friend of yours, not as his sister, because if I was going to talk as his sister here, I'd be furious that you're stringing him along."

"I'm not stringing him along, though?" Vriska took offense to how that was worded, and now that she was offended, she was going to set the matter straight. "I am being a great friend to him. I do like his company, and he's a great guy, like I've said, but I don't think I want to date him right now. If he gets mad about it, that's his problem, because I am totally down for being his friend but not his girlfriend."

Jade, in protective sister mode, thought to maybe go get her brother so that he could hear what was happening, but then she remembered that his mental faculties weren't going to be working very well if he was still getting free drinks, so she refrained from it. However, it didn't mean that she wasn't going to fight in his defense. "You're making him think you like him, when really you don't like him the way he likes you. What do you think he's going to do when he finds out about this?"

"I don't know, and since he's not going to find out about this until long after he's gotten his life figured out and I'm ready to date him, it doesn't really matter." Taking a deep breath before she continued to speak, Vriska didn't even notice that Meenah was standing right behind her as she said her next sentence: "I don't know when it'll be, but once he's ready to be a man and break me from the hell hole I'm living in now, I will gladly be his woman for life, if that's how he wants to play."

Giving a fake sniffle to let her friend know she was behind her, Meenah put in her two cents into the conversation. "Figured you were planin' on havin' that boy be your escape from livin' with me. What, don't you love being a replacement for your sister, after all the great times me and her had? Don't you love being my best friend, always there when I need a good wank after a douche blows me off?"

"This isn't the time for that, Meenah!" Using her elbow as a weapon, Vriska got Meenah right in the gut, causing her to stumble backwards. "This isn't even about you. It's about me and John and what we are now, and what we could easily become."

"'cept you and him ain't gonna be anything but a ship that never sails," Meenah said, still doubled over from the blow she took. "Face it gill, you don't like him even a little bit and you're just lyin' to yourself and his sister both."

"You have no room to talk about liking people, okay? You have guys' numbers in your phone ordered by _dick size_ and you're going to try and tell me that I don't like someone?" The mention of the categorization surprised Jade a bit, as she had no idea about that and it was definitely a shock to her. It also shocked Meenah, who stuck her middle finger up in Vriska's direction. "Wait until you like a guy that doesn't seem like he's going anywhere in life, then come talk to me. Liking someone is a lot different than just fucking them for the fun of it."

Meenah, still holding her finger up, stepped back closer to Vriska and Jade. "No, y'see, it's not different at all. It's still attachment. I'd be broken if one of my guys up and left me, even if I only use him for a good bang every now and then. 'specially if it was one of the ones that ain't average." She shook her head, trying to get herself off the mental image of some of her boy toys and back to the topic they were arguing. "But that's not my point. What my point is, whale, is that you don't want him to be your buoyfrond. You don't even like him enough to wanna make him your buoyfrond, and why? Because he's as aimless in life as we both are, that's why."

"Wait, what happened to the confident in her education girl that I graduated with?" Jade couldn't help but interrupt their heated argument before it got much worse, and her question was aimed solely at Vriska, who seemed to be caught off guard by someone who wasn't Meenah talking to her. "What happened to the girl who wanted so badly to go off and become a historian because ancient pirates interested her more than anything?"

"She died and became less of a nerd." Sighing, Vriska pushed Meenah away again and looked to Jade. "Well, not really, but she's gone now. I couldn't do what was needed to become a historian. Couldn't do the papers, couldn't do all the reading, just couldn't do it. Do you know how much shit I got from my sister when she realized I wasn't going to follow in her footsteps? Or how I got kicked out of my parents' house because they didn't want a community college-going daughter? I may have been great at school back when we were close friends, but now I'm just as good as your brother, which isn't very good at all."

"He's told me about you helping him out with one of his classes. I don't think you can be like him and still be able to teach him a thing or two." Jade smiled at Vriska, who shook her head in return. "Oh, come on, you're still as smart as you were when you graduated third in the class. It's just different now that you have to pay for school."

"Whatever, can we get back to talking about your brother, not me being a fuckup when it comes to my education?" Vriska seemed upset as she spoke.

"Yeah, let's go back to remindin' her that she ain't as in love with someone as she wants to think she is." When Meenah laughed at her own words, Vriska jumped up and punched her straight in the face, knocking her to the floor. Thankfully no one had been around to witness it, but when Meenah got back to her feet she lunged straight at Vriska, and would have began to pummel her if it weren't for someone clearing their throat nearby.

John had come back, a glass in his hand, and he was looking at the impending fight with wide eyes. "Uh, what did I miss that caused the tall, ugly one to snap?" he asked, his voice slurred slightly, and Meenah was about to go for him when Jade stepped in and blocked her brother from view.

"You are all bitches, and I hope you realize that shit like this don't fly." As she was going to walk away, Meenah made some other comment about how Vriska was lucky she paid rent for their apartment or else she'd be out on the street, and to that she got a loud scoff from the honey-haired woman she was aiming the comment at. "I ain't driving your sorry ass home tonight, you keep this shit up. I'm outie." And with that, as quickly as she had involved herself in the situation, she was gone.

"What got into her?" It was John asking something else, but as he was unlikely to retain any information given to him in his current state, no one answered him and he accepted that as a fact. Soon after, acting like nothing had happened in terms of discussing where he stood with anyone, Vriska was offering to play another round of bowling with the two, being especially friendly to John, who was sipping on his drink and progressively getting more and more like a first-time drunk who didn't know when to stop drinking.

He accepted the offer after some pondering, as did Jade, and they got beat worse that time than either of the previous games. Rather than trying to play more when there was no sense or challenge in the game, Vriska then suggested them going to the arcade and playing some games to pass the time, and that idea was taken much more positively than the previous one. There was just one slight problem to them playing in the arcade, and that was that the machines gave out tickets, and what were they going to do with just a small number of tickets? The cheapest thing that could be purchased was five tickets, and it took two attempts at drunkenly playing one of the games for John to manage to win that many.

Thankfully Vriska was there with a lucky streak, and she won enough tickets to buy John all the candy he wanted (which, even though they ended up with over a thousand tickets, he really wanted the giant gummy bears and various miniature candies). Their time in the arcade killed a few hours, and with all the candy they now had, they set off to see what the plan was according to everyone else.

While Jade went into the bar to check on the status of coming or going, she left John and Vriska alone, one not knowing what was going on and the other having some serious guilt within her for things she may have said. "Gosh, you're pretty," John said, getting close to Vriska's face. "Like a model."

"Thanks," she replied, pushing him away to get his alcohol breath out of her face. "You can admire me from a distance though. Whatever you've been drinking smells like death."

"I didn't mean to bother you, I just wanted to get a closer look at you and how pretty you are. Maybe not like a model. More like a goddess. I think I like you."

Hearing those words come from his mouth, even though they were brought on by him being drunk, was something Vriska did not need at that moment, but she realized that she could use this to her advantage. "You think you like me? That's cool. It's a shame I don't want to date you right now, though." Saying it to him, although he wouldn't remember it, brought a little inner peace to her, knowing that she had at least brought up the fact that she wasn't interested in a relationship with him on the night where that topic may have cost her a close friend. "Maybe someday, but not now."

"I don't think I'd want to date me either, really. I'm just a gross guy who doesn't do much except be online and watch movies." John dramatically sighed, leaning up against Vriska's side and wrapping an arm around her. "Doesn't mean we can't be friends, does it?"

"Of course not! You're a cool guy, Egbert, and I love being your friend. I just don't want to be your girlfriend right now, that's all." There was more to that thought, brought around as she looked at him and how downright drunk he was, but Jade came out of the bar and ruined the moment with an announcement: Meenah, when she had left, had managed to convince Jane and Roxy to leave with her, so now Vriska definitely did not have a ride home, and Jade now had two extra spots in her car. "Wait, so you mean I get to stay around until everyone's done?" Vriska asked to clarify, and when she was told that she was correct, she looked at John again. "That's cool. Means more time for me to explain things to your brother."

Jade raised her eyebrows. "You're aware he won't remember this in the morning, right?"

"I sure am. It's sort of why I want to do it now, so that I can get it off my chest to him but he won't know the level of my rejection. It's all for the best." Vriska gave the drunk guy a small smile as she spoke and he giggled like a little schoolgirl as he stared back at her with bloodshot eyes.

"Whatever floats your boat, I guess," Jade said, before tacking on that they were most likely going to be leaving soon, so that whatever she was planning on doing, it needed to be done relatively quickly.

Vriska took that addendum to heart, and as soon as Jade was walking back into the bar to start rounding up everyone she was taking back their homes, she grabbed John and pulled him so that he was standing before her. "Okay, John, listen here. I want to date you. I want to be your girlfriend and call you mine and have you call me yours and all that. I want us to be a thing, the greatest thing ever. But I can't do it. We're too similar, you just spend your time online while I spend it gaming, but we don't really do anything productive on our own time. Until one of us changes, it won't work between us." She watched as he tried to comprehend her, before giving up and nodding in agreement. "I'm glad you understand. Someday, maybe someday soon, we'll be together, but right now? This isn't the time."

"Remind me to get a job when I'm sober," he said, "and remind me to do good in school, and then we can be together, right? If I'm not living off my dad's money, then I'll be the perfect and responsible boyfriend you need and you can keep being the great woman you are and—"

His words were cut off by Vriska giving in to her temptations and pushing her lips against his, not breaking away from him for a good twenty seconds. When she did, he laughed and she smiled, relieved that she had finally done something she had wanted to do since they had started getting close. The problem (for him, she thought this was a perfect thing) was, he wouldn't ever remember that kiss, or any of what he had said, and when he would wake up the next morning it would all be lost to the ages for him.

Of course, that was figuring that Jade hadn't heard the first thing Vriska had said and stopping her trek back to the bar to watch what went down. And being the protective older sister that she was, she knew she had to tell her brother about everything.

He took the parts about him not being good enough to date Vriska pretty badly, but when it came to the part where she kissed him, it changed everything. He so strongly wished he could remember that event, remember the moment on his twenty-first birthday where he had his first kiss, even if it wasn't done in the greatest of situations. But there was no way to remember it, and he was just going to have to accept that fact—a fact that made so much as looking at Vriska, and knowing that she had no desire to date him at that moment, a challenge, and because of that they grew apart once more.

* * *

After the final for his literature class was said and done, and he was fairly certain he had failed it, John had planned on simply heading home and drowning his sorrows in talking to online friends for a while. He hadn't expected to see a familiar face waiting for him outside the classroom, still holding her books and such from taking the very same test. "Hey there, John," Vriska said, motioning for him to sit down at the table by the door, which he did after she did, setting her books between them. "We need to talk."

"Yeah, see, I don't think I want to talk to you right now." He had been trying so hard not to think about this woman and her light brown hair and her bright blue eyes (even though one of them was glass) and her beautiful smile, because he had suffered heartbreak indirectly from her, but as he sat there and got to look at her again, he couldn't help but let her infect his thoughts again. "But whatever, what do you want?"

"I want to say that I'm sorry for everything that happened on your birthday, whether you know about it firsthand or through Jade. I'm sorry I said all that shit about you and that I didn't want to date you, then turned around and took it all back and kissed you. It was dumb on my part and it was so wrong of me, and I bet you're still angry about it." All the words fell out of Vriska's mouth at once, as if she had been rehearsing what she was going to say but forgot what her lines were at the last second. "Please John, just tell me you'll forgive me."

He looked away from her and closed his eyes, the sight of her with her hair in long braids that she had pulled over her shoulders burned into his memory. "I wasn't ever really angry about it, except for having to hear it from Jade. But like, I knew you didn't want to date me, and why did I need a reason? It was your choice. What bugged me was that you chose then, when I wouldn't know what was happening, to kiss me. I would like to know what my first kiss was like, thank you very much."

"Wait, that's your only problem with this situation?" Vriska's voice held surprise, as she had figured he'd be mad about everything, not just the kissing part. "Are you telling me that I haven't talked to you in a month because you were upset I kissed you while you were drunk?"

"That and the fact that I can't look at you without remembering how much I like you. It's hard, knowing that you don't want me because I'm going nowhere in life. I'll work on that for you, if it means anything." His eyes opened again and he looked back to her, a small smile on his lips. "If me trying to make something of my life would mean that you'd consider dating me, I'd do it in a heartbeat."

She shrugged. "You doing that should be for you, not for a girl."

"It would be for me, and for you. You're the first person I've ever felt this way about, and I want to make something of it if it's possible." John fidgeted, tapping the table a bit as he tried to collect his thoughts, but they were all stuck on how impossibly beautiful Vriska was. "Sorry if I seem like I'm being weird, but you're just so…"

"Beautiful? Like a goddess? You've told me that before," Vriska said with a soft laugh, before standing up and grabbing her books off the table. "Now, I think I should probably get going, since I think this is just going to end up with one of us hurting, and the last thing I want right now is to hurt you again."

"You aren't going to hurt me." John jumped up and grabbed both of Vriska's arms, looking straight at her as he did. "In fact, it'll just hurt worse if you leave. Come on, let's just talk things over, remind each other why we ever liked one another, and then part as friends, just like it used to be."

She shook her head, as she tried to get her arms out of his grasp. "No, trust me, if I stick around one of us will hurt, and that's not what I want here. I just wanted to apologize for what I did that night, and I wanted to make sure things were okay between us. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less."

"You've done that job then, but now it's my turn to make you stay so I can apologize."

"There's nothing you need to apologize for!" She hadn't meant to raise her voice, but when she did, it startled John, causing him to let go of her. "Ugh, sorry for yelling there, but it's true. You did nothing wrong by liking me. I'm the one in the wrong for rejecting you because you aren't focused in where you want to go in life, but me doing that is super hypocritical because I'm not going anywhere either." Turning to run off and leave the mess behind her, Vriska was stopped once again by John grabbing her. "Okay, let go of me for real this time, Egbert. I don't want to hurt you."

"You running off is what's going to hurt me. I'm not hiding from what I feel anymore, so why should you hide from the fact that you like me but don't want to date me?" His point got her to turn around, and when she did, she got to see John smiling at her. "That's the spirit. Embrace the fact that you have said you like me, just like I embrace the fact that I like you more and more every time I see you. But accept that you don't want to date me yet, just like I've accepted it."

"And things won't get awkward?" Vriska hadn't ever considered the fact that John was so accepting and easygoing when it came to things, and this was not a situation she had expected in the slightest. When he shook his head, she had another question to ask. "But what about the fact that we've kissed, huh?"

At that he shrugged. "I don't remember it happening. The one part of my birthday I wish I could say I have a memory of." There was a moment of silence between them as they looked at each other, only broken by the sound of them stepping forward to kiss again, right there in the hallway outside of the classroom. When they broke apart, there was a silent promise made between them that they didn't do that again until they were dating, made with motions of zipping lips and throwing away imaginary keys.

It took close to a year of self-improvement and focus on both of their parts, but there would soon be a time in their lives where kissing each other became a near-daily occurrence.

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**A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed this fic! But most especially, I hope one kamikaze2007 enjoyed it most. Happy birthday, dude! :)**


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